Eating too much, eating not enough, having sex, not having sex, aging parents, grief, drugs, childhood trauma, and the last call of ovaries— a woman’ s body at mid-life can get messy. Debbie Bateman’ s stories take a clear-eyed look at the largely unexplored private world of a pivotal stage in virtually every woman’ s life. These stories are linked not only by the characters, but also by the visceral themes of food, sex, exercise, beauty, and aging. The secret clenching of a fist, the unwinding of a silk scarf, the proud refusal to have breast reconstruction, the women in these stories want full authority over their bodies and their lives.