Dear Digby
A Novel
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
An oddball newspaper editor advises eccentric readers—and reckons with her own painful past in this psychological thriller
Willis Digby is the letters editor at Sis (Sisterhood) magazine, a job that drives her mad. A Miss Lonelyhearts for feminists, Willis plows through correspondence that fluctuates from the predictable, boosterish boilerplate to letters challenging conventional notions of sanity, struggling to find a balance in her selections for publication in the landmark journal. Memorable letters include those from a woman who sprinkles cat food into her husband's breakfast cereal each morning, one from a woman convinced that the man on the label of her cleaning products is harassing her, and endless gender-specific descriptions of peculiar sexual proclivities.
As Digby strikes up an unconventional friendship with one of her correspondents, she also confronts a harrowing childhood incident that has come back to haunt her. At once witty and powerful, Dear Digby is a thrilling tragicomedy that explores the shifting borders of the self, or selves, that define individual sanity and conventional thought, and redefine communication among lost souls.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This silly, sentimental valentine of a book is saved by Dukes's natural flair for comedy. Willis Jane Digby is the letters editor of SISTERHOOD magazine (known as SIS ), a sort of liberated Ladies' Home Journal . Most of the letters she receives are the humdrum, run-of-the-mill kind, but there are some that Digby--whose wacky sense of humor has her sitting behind her desk wearing a tuxedo and rabbit ears--can't resist answering. She prints the weirdest ones in her bi-monthly column. Correspondents include Dino Pedrelli, a short, horny man who threatens to rape the staff; a creepy guy who signs himself ``The Watcher'' and who seems to follow her every move; and Iris Moss, a patient at a mental institute where, she claims, she's being sexually assaulted. Digby takes Iris's letters seriously and notifies the local paper, which discovers a massive cover-up of a longstanding practice of sexual abuse. There are various subplots too: Digby's faltering marriage, her unresolved feelings about her father and her involvement in the shooting death of a childhood friend. All these strings are tied together at the end when Digby learns that women--and perhaps men--are ``anarchists for love.''
