Sweetsir

It was over so fast that Sally didn't know what happened. There was Sweets lying on the floor with all the color draining out of him and she knew she had killed him. But she couldn't have. She loved him. She only wanted to scare him, to make him stop hitting her. But she had also wanted to fight back — — and her fighting back had killed him. Now she would have to live with that.

The marriage of Sally and Morgan Sweetsir was a strangely powerful bond of passion, exuberance, frustration, and violence. The two were locked in a need for each other that for a time seemed to erase their rage and disappointment with life. But their love soon became a kind of madness formed by their own misconceptions and by the wildly mixed images our culture has formed of love and marriage. One day their life together exploded in fury and Morgan Sweetsir became one of love's casualties.

In this thoroughly riveting novel Helen Yglesias presents a portion of American life laid bare. As she unveils the private brutalities of a marriage and portrays a woman who is pushed to the very edge of her endurance, she looks starkly at a moment of horror that many people will never face. Yet, in exploring the nuances of this turbulent relationship, she creates in her readers the same compelling sense of identification with Sally Sweetsir that the heroine herself tries to impart to the jury who will try her for murder.

~ from 1981 hardcover dustjacket

• Author
• Helen Yglesias

• Format
• hardcover

• Publisher
• Simon and Schuster

• Language
• english

• ISBN
• 9780345303110

• Characters
• Sally Sweetsir, Morgan Beauchamp Sweetsir

• Settings
• Eatonville (fictive), New England

• Genres
• fiction

• Release date
• 1982