Publication Date: July 9, 2024
It’s 1949, the freedom granted women by the Second World War is over, and stifling social conventions are once more at play. Edith Sloan, the rebellious, well-educated heroine of An Open Door returns in The Hedgerow to pursue her dreams of owning a thriving bookstore on Harvard Square and establishing a poetry press to publish the silent and underserved. Free of her dreary marriage to Walter, she receives a proposal from Henry, a wealthy British peer and the man who made the purchase of her bookstore possible. When she accepts, is it from love or gratitude? Will being his wife help or hinder her plans? Edith soon finds herself at the intersection of free expression and censorship. Duty competes with desire, while serious endeavors are undermined by trivial pursuits. As she tries to balance the competing demands in her life, troubling facts from Henry’s past come to light. Edith also discovers that being a pioneer in publishing comes with consequences she hadn’t foreseen. The decade draws to a close and delivers one more surprise Edith must summon extraordinary courage to face.
Leaving one failed marriage behind and poised to enter a new one, Edith Sloan tries to determine her path forward.
Anne Leigh Parrish’s The Hedgerow depicts an independent woman in 1949 who has big dreams about her bookstore.
Having not read the first book in the series, I felt a sense of disconnection from Edith and didn’t fully appreciate her as a character. I did appreciate her determination to become a book publisher.
Edith is on a search to find herself and make decisions about the future. Along the way, she encounters some unexpected surprises that cause her to change direction.
The Hedgerow highlights life in 1949 and what it was like for women seeking a career path.
Anne Leigh Parrish is the author of thirteen previously published books, including the novel A Summer Morning (October 2023) and poetry collection If The Sky Won’t Have Me (April 2023). Anne’s fourteenth, The Hedgerow (July 2024), is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. She lives with her family amongst the evergreen trees in Olympia, Washington.
