Nine Bean Rows

Elizabeth Putnam, fifty-nine, bookstore owner, is surrounded by plants, poetry, flowers, friends. She loves Yeats' poems. She names her house Innisfree, and lives alone in her "bee-loud glade." Until the day David Greene, poet, Peace Corps veteran, wearing a beret and limping slightly, walks into Putnam & Ryan, Books. And into her life. Nine Bean Rows is the story of Elizabeth's life, lived well and fully. It is a happy life, in spite of disappointment and loss. It is also the story of Patrick Callahan, to whom she was once married briefly, of Richard Adams, who loved her enough not to marry her, and of David Greene, whom she loved but would not marry. In this brilliant and poignant first novel, Reese Danley-Kilgo has captured, without sentimentality, the essence of love that is deeper than most of us ever know. Yet this is not a "love story" and far from a "romance novel." It is a story of life and love, of sorrow and joy, with an unexpected, but satisfying ending.