Henley, Patricia 1947–

PERSONAL:

Born June 9, 1947, in Terre Haute, IN; daughter of Joseph (a telecommunications engineer) and Virginia (a homemaker) Cowgill; married Charles King Henley, August, 1968 (divorced, July, 1977); married S.K. Robisch (a professor of American literature), May 22, 1993; children: Kathleen O'Neal Odom, Charles Michael. Education: Johns Hopkins University, M.A., 1974. Politics: "Democratic Party." Religion: Catholic.

ADDRESSES:

Home—West Lafayette, IN. Office—Purdue University, Department of English, Heavilon Hall, West Lafayette, IN 47906. E-mail—phenley15@hotmail.com.

CAREER:

Writer, novelist, short-story writer, and educator. Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, professor of English, 1987—. Volunteer, St. Thomas Aquinas Center.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Montana First Book Award, Montana Arts Council, 1986, for Friday Night at the Silver Star; Best American Short Stories 1990, 1990, for The Secret of Cartwheels; National Book Award finalist, 1999, for Hummingbird House; IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize nomination, 2000, for Hummingbird House; New Yorker Best Fiction Award finalist.

WRITINGS:

Learning to Die: Poems, Three Rivers Press (New York, NY), 1979.

Friday Night at Silver Star: Stories, Graywolf Press (St. Paul, MN), 1986.

The Secret of Cartwheels: Short Stories, Graywolf Press (St. Paul, MN), 1992.

Back Roads, Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA), 1996.

Hummingbird House (novel), MacMurray & Beck (Denver, CO), 1999.

Worship of the Common Heart: New and Selected Stories, MacMurray & Beck (Denver, CO), 2000.

In the River Sweet (novel), Pantheon (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor to anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Anthology.

SIDELIGHTS:

Among poet and fiction-writer Patricia Henley's critically praised works is her 1999 debut novel Hummingbird House. Set in Central America in the late 1980s, the novel features protagonist Kate Banner, a Michigan midwife who has spent the last eight years in Nicaragua. Worn out with her work and traumatized by the death around her, she decides it is time to leave. Kate moves to Guatemala, where she stays in a house with a group of activist friends. With Father Dixie Ryan, a struggling priest, she opens Hummingbird House, a clinic and school for Guatemalan children. In researching her novel, Henley spent five months traveling around Guatemala interviewing refugees, activists, and Indian women.

On the whole, Hummingbird House was well received, and was a finalist for the prestigious National Book Award. A reviewer for Booklist called the book "a strongly written and wrenching tale of self-sacrifice" and wrote that "Henley has written a strongly political first novel that avoids being merely a polemic only because she has managed to make Kate a sympathetic, believable character whose thoughts and reactions seem both honest and realistic."

Other works by Henley include Worship of the Common Heart: New and Selected Stories, which contains nineteen stories penned over two decades. Praising Henley as "an unusual writer of true distinction," Book contributor Ann Collette noted that the stories feature women from all walks of life engaged in change; "immediate in their impact, these stories distinguish themselves from the bland sameness that characterizes much of contemporary short fiction," the critic maintained. In the Library Journal, Lisa Nussbaum cited Henley's "folksy, down-to-earth style and likable, flawed characters," while in Publishers Weekly a critic noted that "post-hippie attitudes … [such as] a disdain for conventional mores, a preference for relationships with like-minded free spirits and an appreciation for nature" characterize Worship of the Common Heart.

The protagonist of Henley's novel In the River Sweet is Ruth Anne Bond, a fifty-year-old Hoosier woman living in the small town of Tarkington, IN. She is comfortably set in her Midwest lifestyle, a dedicated Catholic, and a devoted wife and mother. She works as the town librarian, while her husband, Johnny, runs a restaurant. When her daughter Laurel declares herself to be a lesbian, Ruth Anne struggles to reconcile her religious beliefs against homosexuality with her strong love for her daughter. Soon, Ruth Anne is reeling from another blow to her complacent lifestyle: she receives an e-mail from a young Vietnamese man who identifies himself as Tin Tran, the illegitimate son that Ruth Anne gave up for adoption years ago when she was working at a French convent in Vietnam. Tin, also living in the Midwest, is getting married, and wants to meet with Ruth Anne to get acquainted with the mother he never knew. Facing a multitude of conflicting emotions and vivid memories from her past, Ruth Anne considers her options, wondering how she will break her secret to her husband and daughter, and worrying that her past indiscretions will destroy her life in the present. "The moral dilemmas attendant upon living with such a secret are sensitively treated and readers' sympathies for each of the troubled characters will be fully engaged," commented a reviewer in Publishers Weekly. A Kirkus Reviews critic called the novel "sentimental, but readable and sincere all the same." Henley "has crafted a story with solid characters who command our attention," remarked Christine Thomas in the San Francisco Chronicle. "Despite some jolts along the road," Thomas concluded, "In the River Sweet remains remarkably captivating, a provoking meditation on the contradictions of strength and vulnerability that lie within us all."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Book, November, 2000, Ann Collette, review of Worship of the Common Heart: New and Selected Stories, p. 75.

Booklist, March 15, 1999, Nancy Pearl, review of Hummingbird House, p. 1289; February 1, 2000, Donna Seaman, review of Hummingbird House, p. 1011; August, 2002, Eileen Hardy, review of In the River Sweet, p. 1919.

Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2002, review of In the River Sweet, p. 904.

Kliatt, September, 2004, Nola Theiss, review of In the River Sweet, p. 21.

Library Journal, June 15, 1986, Peter Bricklebank, review of Friday Night at Silver Star: Stories, p. 78; October 15, 2000, Lisa Nussbaum, review of Worship of the Common Heart, p. 107; November 1, 2004, Nancy Pearl, "A Bushel and a Peck of Hoosier Reads," review of In the River Sweet, p. 135.

New York Times, October 13, 2002, Carol Doup Muller, "Books in Brief; Fiction," review of In the River Sweet.

New York Times Book Review, July 6, 1986, W.D. Wetherell, review of Friday Night at Silver Star, p. 17; January 31, 1993, David Wong Louie, review of The Secret of Cartwheels, p. 6; November 7, 1999, Jeannie Pyun, review of Hummingbird House, p. 26; December 24, 2000, Jeff Waggoner, review of Worship of the Common Heart, p. 14.

Publishers Weekly, April 25, 1986, review of Friday Night at Silver Star, p. 89; August 14, 2000, review of Worship of the Common Heart, p. 328; September 30, 2002, review of In the River Sweet, p. 48.

San Francisco Chronicle, December 29, 2002, "A Catholic Mom with a Secret Past," Christine Thomas, review of In the River Sweet, p. RV-5.

Washington Post Book World, December 15, 2002, Aoibheann Sweeney, "Sea of Troubles," review of In the River Sweet, p. 3.

ONLINE

Amazon.com,http://www.amazon.com/ (May 18, 2000), "Amazon.com talks to Patricia Henley."

IdentityTheory.com,http://www.identitytheory.com/ (December 18, 2002), Robert Birnbaum, interview with Patricia Henley.

Patricia Henley Home Page,http://www.patriciahenley.com (January 2, 2007).

Powells.com,http://www.powells.com/ (January 2, 2007), "Of Cairns & Gratitude," autobiography of Patricia Henley.