While She Starved

Fern Burke is left in the countryside while her husband, Edwin Smith, moves into the military with his widowed sister-in-law, Vera Green. Edwin insists Vera must be sheltered from gossip, yet his explanation masks a cruel choice: every month he mails Fern three neat love letters while diverting his entire military allowance to Vera. As famine tightens, Vera and her children dine safely on meat buns in Edwin’s city home; Fern and her children wither in silence. Betrayed and betrayed again, Fern's pain is invisible until fate grants her a second chance at life; this time the wrongs will not be endured in quiet, the woman who starved now returns, resolved and unignorable in her refusal to be erased.