Animal Wife’s fifteen stories take place in worlds of fantasy, mystery, chance, contradictions and danger—a world where, “happiness has sharp edges.” Women of various ages and stages, from childhood to adulthood, experience the real and the idyllic inherent in the “feminine mystique,” and in life itself. They navigate through innocence, sexuality, uncertainty, expectations of others, as well as their own fears, memories and desires. Readers are delightfully and inevitably drawn in to their own navigation of the blurred lines between fantasy and its underlying realities.

These captivating tales involve women longing, though not always for a clearly defined “something”; often they have no desire for the things others tell them they should want or have. They strive or drift toward identity, fulfillment, and varied forms of escape with surprising inner and outer transformations, sometimes frightening, sometimes wished for and self-fulfilling.

There is the enigmatic fate of one whose swan sisters warn her that, “no good can come of longing,” yet her longing draws her to a man who, “hides her feathers.” a young girl’s friends tell her ,”It doesn’t matter if you like a boy or not; it only matters if he likes you.” One, “concentrates so hard on appearing pleasant, she forgets to breathe”; A wannabe deer woman, “needs a change she can’t come back from.” One drinks the cotton candy-flavored Foresight, delivered in an Amazon box, but ultimately rejects all the “possible futures” presented to her, “preferring the unknown.”

In a recent interview with Joel Brown of Bostonia (Boston University’s alumni magazine), Ehrlich speaks of her interest in, “capturing a sense of fuzziness between reality and fantasy. I want to give the readers room to interpret the reality or unreality of a situation—but there’s a fine line between intentional uncertainty and unintentional confusion….I’ve intended them to question reality.”

We are reminded of the wide-spread appeal of imaginative works, such as Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and those of more contemporary authors, such as Italo Calvino and Elizabeth Allende. Not only has this genre of literature been  read and enjoyed through time, it has forever been retold  and  drawn upon in art, drama, film and television. It also has long been explored and analyzed by scholars

(Joseph Campbell), and psychologists (Jung and Bettelheim) for its dream-like magic with meaning.

There is this kind of appeal for readers in the highly recommended Animal Wife, Red Hen Press’s Fiction Award winner, with its  fresh take on the mythopoeic in relation to women’s lives. It is engaging at every turn of the page for its innovative approach. Ehrlich weaves compelling characters and situations, gripping images and language in her deft storytelling

Sandra Williams, MA, taught World Literature, and Writing, Reading & Research at both the secondary and higher education levels. She writes poetry, essays and fiction and is author of Moss on Stone: a historical novella, and Time and Tide: a collection of tales. She has published essays in New View Magazine (UK) and has written for journals, newsletters, and marketing/PR for non-profit organizations .She was co-chair for the first writers’ conference on Cape Ann, MA: The Dogtown Writers Festival: Finding Words Place (2019), sponsored by Gloucester Writers Center, where she also served on the board of directors, and facilitated poetry workshops. cosmicseanotes.blogspot.com