Sunday, Monday, and Always: Stories by Dawn Powell

In addition to the novels and the diaries that have won her posthumous acclaim, Dawn Powell wrote hundreds of short stories over the course of half a century. Sunday, Monday and Always , initially published in 1952, was the author’s own personal selection of her best work in the form. This new, expanded edition of Sunday, Monday, and Always includes four additional short pieces written after the original collection was printed.

“What Are You Doing in my Dreams?” is an uncommonly moving autobiographical sketch that may serve as a pocket sketch for all of Powell’s art. All the familiar elements are here – life and death; Ohio and New York; the awkward, hungry country girl and the city sophisticate; romantic yearning and realist self-deprecation – brought together one last time at the close of a half-century of meditation.

The haunting vignette entitled “The Elopers,” is based on the author’s own experiences with her much loved, much troubled son. An early gem from The New Yorker, “Can’t We Cry A Little?” has never before been reprinted, and “Dinner on the Rocks,” a typically riotous send-up of Manhattan manners, was one of Powell’s last stories.

Sunday, Monday, and Always promises to introduce Powell’s many admirers to a new facet of her extraordinary talent.