The Simpering, North Dakota Literary Society

by G.F. Skipworth
(Portland, OR, USA)

Card shark and ex-nun Farika Zingarella won the town of Simpering, North Dakota in the greatest card game ever played at the Huffy Hussy Casino & Billiards Parlor. Gathering five female geniuses to her side, she established a prairie empire that could take on the world - which is precisely what it did. There wasn't much to laugh about in 1919. World War I had ended, fascism was on the rise in Italy and American women took on the suffrage question. Then along came The Literary Society. You've never lived in a town like this!

****

A work of historical fiction and light humor, the gravity of the era lies clearly beneath the whimsical story. However, by this the reader is spared being assaulted by yet another harsh commentary. The major world events of 1919 are under constant reference, but the primary backdrop is the suffrage issue, although it is not belabored within the story. Good-looking, intelligent people are always a source of humor when taken out of their element. In "Simpering," the prim and proper meet the wild and unpredictable, east meets west and everyone meets themselves. The reader who seeks "serial shock," brutality and the sailors' lexicon will be disappointed by this tongue-in-cheek historical farce.