Are Parents People?

The setup is almost unbearably real: Lita Hazlitt, a studious girl who runs her boarding school's self-government committee, looks down from the gallery and sees her divorced parents in the same room for the first time since their split. Her mother above, her father below. Each waiting for their daughter to choose them. The desperation that follows is both achingly real and bitingly funny. Lita, who has built her adolescent life around order and rules, tries manipulation, then rebellion, threatening to scandalize her parents by spending time with an older married man. Miller's nine linked stories dissect the polite horrors of divorce in 1920s America, revealing what gets lost when adults weaponize their children against each other. Written by a committed suffrage activist, the collection argues fiercely for women's independence while showing its complicated aftermath. Nearly a century old, this still hurts.