Minerva, Minnesota, in 1923 is the picture of Willa Cather-like gentility: the Northern Pacific Railway runs through a town center dominated by church steeples and the Hamilton Creamery and Pop Factory. But Minerva is also a small town of limited opportunity, a place where the status quo is firmly entrenched and rigidly enforced. Against this tableau of midwestern placidity and calm, three Minerva women assert their dignity and independence against all odds.

The troubled relationship between young Penny and her mother, Barbara, is getting worse. Disturbed by her mother's affair with the man they clean house for, Penny answers an ad to work for Cora Egan, a Chicago society woman who has fled a bad marriage and intends to raise her child alone on her grandfather's farm. Cora's situation shocks the town, but over time her presence opens a door in Penny's and Barbara's lives. Through these women, Mary Sharratt considers what it takes to reinvent the self, to claim one's true identity.

Mary Sharratt's first novel, Summit Avenue, was hailed as a "remarkablel debut . . . [that] weaves dark, evocative fairy tales and passionate longings into an incandescent coming-of-age story" (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Readers interested in feminine archetypes and women in myth will be similarly drawn to Sharratt's newest novel. Exquisite historical detail and emotional resonance infuseThe Real Minerva,an old-fashioned story with a modern spirit.

"This story of three women — a mother, her daughter and the town pariah — living in a Minnesota hamlet in 1923 is a heartfelt tale of female empowerment, hampered slightly by unnecessary exposition and a sometimes predictable plot. Fifteen-year-old Penny Niebeck is a curious, gentle girl living and working with her beautiful mother, Barbara, a cleaning woman for the privileged Hamilton family. Hardened by incest (of which Penny was the result), Barbara loves her daughter but is suspicious and cynical about human nature. She's also having an affair with Laurence Hamilton, a relationship that disgusts Penny. Meanwhile, Penny finds 'the Maagdenbergh woman,' whose real name is Cora Egan, fascinating. A moneyed socialite rumored to have fled Chicago and an abusive husband, Cora dresses like a man and runs her family farm on her own — but she's pregnant and could use a hired hand. Following a quarrel with her mother, Penny runs to Cora's, arriving just in time to help her give birth to a baby girl. It's the beginning of a beautiful but deeply complicated friendship, as the women's relationships with their men take tragic turns. While Sharratt's (Summit Avenue) male characters are often leering and dangerous, her female characters emerge as convincingly ambivalent, yearning and sympathetic, and their emotionally satisfying, old-fashioned happy ending should be a crowd pleaser. Agent, Wendy Sherman. Author tour. (Sept. 22)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information, Inc.)

In 1923 Minerva, Minnesota, the status quo is firmly entrenched and rigidly enforced. "The Real Minerva" employs the same lively, feminist spirit of Sharratt's debut work, "Summit Avenue," as she follows the lives of three women in this repressive Midwestern town.

Set in Minerva, Minnesota in 1923, this is a startling novel of three women who struggle to assert their dignity and independence against all odds. Penny, smart as a whip at fifteen years old, is not happy about being forced to drop out of school. Furthermore, she"s humiliated by what she deems a tawdry affair that her mother Barbara, cleaning woman to the Hamiltons - "scions of Minerva" - is having with the man of the house. But when Penny, after a nasty spat with her mother, answers an ad to be the hired girl to a woman who has already shocked Minerva society - a society woman from Chicago named Cora who is hiding out on her grandfather"s farm - the status quo is shattered.

MARY SHARRATT’s first novel, Summit Avenue, was a Book Sense selection. She has taught at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and has given workshops around the country on the subject of women and fairy tales. She lives in Lancashire, England.