Room for Me

• Main Author: Root, Crystal Lynn
• Format: Others
• Published: PDXScholar 2010
• Subjects: Women's colleges > Virginia > Fiction; College students > Social life and customs > Fiction
• Online Access: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/1211; https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2210&context=open_access_etds

This collection of interwoven short stories revolves around a small Southern women's college and its inhabitants. Written in first-person from various perspectives, the stories combine, much like Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, to create a final cohesive work that is not quite a novel. Main characters include the gentle, introspective teenage son of a faculty member, the garrulous student with whom he is enamored, and her skeptic of a half-sister. One parallel narrative involves a search for self and story through music and musicians, the other via a campus ghost. The focus, as with Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding, is character-driven rather than plot-based. Shared experiences--an ice storm, a betrayal by college trustees--are viewed through multiple characters, leading to a decision each, though searching for connection, must make alone.