The Avengers by Chris Evans

The Avengers by Chris Evans

Combining the pathos and social significance of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-stop Caf and the humor of The Golden Girls with a cast of diverse characters worthy of the musical Rent, Fishwives chronicles a lifetime through the eyes of two old women behaving badly.

On a cold winter day when eighty-nine-year old Regina and ninety-year-old Jackie--who met in 1955, an era when women were rounded up and jailed simply for dancing together or dressing like a man--manage to get themselves out of the house. With the help of TJ and Ramon, two young men from their working-class neighborhood in Western Massachusetts, they tie their long-dead Christmas tree to the top of their car and, using a screwdriver in place of a broken gearshift, slowly make the drive to the dump.

This is also the day when everything changes.

In the course of the day, memories are triggered, and their history as a passionate, devoted, but troubled couple at the intersection of historic cultural and political change unfolds via scenes from the past: their first meeting during a police raid on the bar; Regina's epiphany that she could truly love a woman; Jackie's persistent infidelity and gambling; a nomadic life often lived apart in the early years as they run away from landlords who discover their secret, toward jobs and a sustainable life, sometimes away from, but always back to each other; the Kennedy assassination, a backdrop to one reconciliation; Jackie's efforts to convince Regina to marry, Regina's saying yes.

Few elderly characters (and even fewer queers) depicted in fiction are seen in their full humanity. Rarer still are depictions of old people in the fullness of their sexuality. Fishwives pulls back a long-closed curtain, revealing these aging women as sensual, loving, and flawed beings struggling with the harsh realities of life, including poverty, which Jackie calls that fishwife who gets louder and meaner in old age.

Two stories adapted from Fishwives have won First Prize for Fiction at the Tennessee Williams Saints and Sinners Festival and along with a third excerpt have been published in anthologies connected with the festival. Adapted stories were also published in Bloom and Dappled Things, a Catholic literary magazine. Dorothy Allison selected a short story Sunflowers, adapted from Fishwives, for inclusion in Walking the Edge: A Southern Gothic Anthology.

Chris Evans is a historian and editor who specializes in military history and current events.