“Wendy Fairey is a wickedly candid storyteller who doesn’t shrink 
from her unsettling knowledge of how we behave at both our worst
and best. Her graceful, self-assured prose registers subtle interior
shifts as well as outrageous, sometimes heroic acts. In the poker
game that links these compelling stories, Fairey has found the
perfect metaphor for a previously unexplored subject: older women
who risk life’s luck and losses with undiminished appetites.”—Joan
Larkin, author, A Long Sound and Cold River

    Wendy Fairey’s first work of fiction consists of eleven linked stories 
set mainly in contemporary New York City and East Hampton, Long 
Island. In “Over the Hill,” a friendship ruptures after a biking accident
in France; in “The Bad Hand,” a friend who has been an important
figure in the narrator Jenny’s life has a recurrence of cancer; in “House
of Cards,” Jenny is forced out of her original poker game and is invited
to play in another. Several stories flash back to Jenny’s past, including
“Family Pets,” which evokes a beloved dog and a detested stepfather,
and “Mind and Body,” which tells the story of Jenny’s marriage and of
her bisexuality. In the last story, Jenny joins in a Gay Pride march in
Paris, accompanied by her grown son and baby granddaughter.

    “By turns funny, wise, smart, and briskly tender, Wendy Fairey’s 
collection of linked stories is elegant proof that if life is a lot like poker,
the trick is not just staying in the game, but keeping it interesting.
With winner-take-all verve, Fairey antes up with an intimate portrait
of a life well lived and still going strong.”—Joanna Torrey, author,
Hungry and He Goes, She Goes

    “A strong meditation on sex and sexuality, on the risks involved in 
being a sexual creature.”—Steve Yarbrough, author, Visible Spirits

_________________________________________________________

WENDY FAIREY is the author of One of the Family (Norton, 1992), 
a memoir of growing up in Hollywood as the daughter of gossip 
columnist Sheilah Graham and discovering the identity of her true 
father, the British philosopher A. J. Ayer. She holds a doctorate 
from Columbia University in English and comparative literature and 
teaches English literature and creative writing at Brooklyn College 
in New York. She lives in New York City and East Hampton, Long 
Island, and has two children and four grandchildren.



What people are saying about this book

“A finely nuanced voice is at work here, capable of fully realizing 
the complex inner lives of a fascinating array of women.”—
Lawrence Thornton, author, Imagining Argentina

“The good and not-so-good old girls in this group of sharply
observed stories play to win, competitively flexing their middle-
aged minds and muscles. Wendy Fairey’s voice is clear, cool,
proud, and poignant; her fresh take on women and aging is funny,
insightful, and ultimately energizing.”—Rachel M. Brownstein,
author, Becoming a Heroine