On borrowed wings : a novel / Chandra Prasad.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Prasad, Chandra.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women college students--Fiction.

Women college students.

False personation--Fiction.

False personation.

Connecticut--Fiction.

Connecticut.

Genre:

Fiction.

Physical Description:

311 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First Atria Books hardcover edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Atria Books, 2007.

Summary:

Adele Pietra has heard her mother say that her destiny is carved in the same brilliantly hued granite her father and brother cleave from the Stony Creek mine: she is to marry a quarryman. But when Adele's brother, Charles, dies in a mining accident, Adele sees the chance to change her life. Enrolling at Yale as Charles, Adele assumes his identity -- and gender -- as a way to leave behind her mother's expectations and the limitations of her provincial Connecticut town. To her own surprise, hair chopped and chest bound, Adele falls in naturally with a lively crew of undergraduates: the Jewish Harry Persky with his slick Manhattan know-how, the quiet and mysterious legacy student Phineas, and the lanky, charismatic Wick. And in many ways, Adele faces her freshman year at Yale as would any undergraduate boy: she dreads invasive PE examinations and looks forward to dances, experiments with cigarettes and reads the classics. Through her work with a questionable eugenics professor and her friendship with a local Italian family, Adele confronts her class and ethnicity as never before, all the while fearing that both her crush on Wick and her mother's well-meaning interventions will put an end to her delicate masquerade.

ISBN:

9780743297820

0743297822

OCLC:

76184249

Online:

Publisher description

Contributor biographical information