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Alma Routsong (Isabel Miller)
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 Patience
and Sarah by Isabel Miller (Alma Routsong)
In the early nineteenth century, in a
puritanical New England town, two women fall in love. With no one
to guide or support them, Patience and Sarah try to follow their
hearts. Defying society and history, they buy a farm and discover
they can live together, away from the world that had sought to
limit them and their love . . .
"A remarkable story."-- Publishers
Weekly.
 Side
by Side by Isabel Miller
Love between Patricia and Sharon is born during
the days of their childhood. Maybe even before.
Discovered in their love and separated by their parents, the two
travel very different paths , distance and in the ensuing years,
their love tested by time, distance, and other women.
They find each other in a singular place: New
York City. During a singular and tumultuous event: the
rebellion at a tavern called the Stonewall Inn.
Side by Side shows us the fear and heroism of
gay men and lesbians at the perilous, exhilarating, unprecedented
birth of a community. It takes us into the hearts of two
young women determined to live as they must, who learn to dare, to
seize their courage and put everything on the line: their jobs,
their lives, their future.
Side by Side is exciting, funny, loving
and beautiful. With delicious and spine-chilling parallels
to the legendary Patience and Sarah.
 A
Dooryard Full of Flowers by Isabel Miller
The beautiful continuation of Isabel Miller's
acclaimed all-time classic, Patience and Sarah. Glimpse
these two beloved women in their "...slow, ardent, exalted
life together" as you rejoin them in a segment from the
never-completed second novel of their lives.
You will savor the other jewels in this
collection. A married woman who falls in love
with her mother-in-law... Tildy, who is visited by a young
pregnant girl wanting something Tildy is determined not to give...
A woman in the post-World War II Navy, who is certain that this
time she will not fall in love with a new woman bunkmate...
Teenager Robin, who knows so much more than either her lesbian
mother or her newly remarried father dream she knows... A young
woman who comes under the scrutiny of a government security check,
with both expected and unexpected results... Lucille, who meets
the woman she has written to for years, and finds surprise answers
to questions about both of their lives...
And much, much more, in this rich collection
from one of the finest storytellers of this or any generation.
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A pioneering love story
Music by Paula M. Kimper, Libretto by Wende
Persons, based on the novel by Isabel Miller. Ticket
information provided.
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From Jonathan Katz, Gay American History
According to Alma Routsong, author (under the
pen name Isabel Miller) of the Lesbian novel Patience and Sarah,
her book was not written with any conscious political aim. Yet her
work clearly captures and expresses, in fictional form, that
Lesbian-feminist consciousness developing in America in the 1960s.
Although its author's intention was simply to write the love story
of two women, her work is important in that Lesbian
literary-political tradition - - the Lesbian defense in fictional
form. As such, the writing of Patience and Sarah
constituted an act of Lesbian resistance. The following interview
makes clear how Routsong's experience as a woman and Lesbian was
central in shaping the consciousness expressed in her book - - and
in inspiring its conception, writing,and publication.
Alma Routsong's novel, which she first published
herself under the title A Place for Us (1967), relates the
story of Patience White and Sarah Dowling, detailing the
development of their love against the background of a hostile,
puritanical, New England farm community in 1816. The two women
alternately narrate their own story, as each experiences it. Their
words have a naive simplicity, belying the sophisticated wisdom of
their thought. The language of the novel is the perfect verbal
equivalent of those "primitive" paintings of which, in
the book, Patience White is the creator. The novel has a lovely
unity of style and content, but quite apart from its literary
quality (always a matter of subjective judgment), Patience and
Sarah - - inspired as it was by two women who actually lived
and farmed together in Greene County, New York, about 1820 - -
suggests how knowledge of American Lesbian history may serve the
culture of a people in search of its past...
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By marie kuda, Outlines, The Voice of
Chicago's Gay and Lesbian Community, July 26, 2000
I've been around a long time,
but it's been ages since this old Chicago dyke has been so excited
about anything. I am counting down the days with the anticipation
of that fabled lesbian "second date." You know the one,
where you show up with a U-Haul and hope to begin your new life
together. What I am so eagerly awaiting is the Chicago premiere of
Paula Kimper and Wende Person's opera Patience & Sarah in
August, part of Bailiwick's Pride 2000 Series.
I say "second date"
because I already fell in love with the subject ladies when I
first met them in Alma Routsong's book A Place For Us written
under her nom de plume Isabel Miller in 1969. By now, almost
everyone knows how her book was picked up by mainstream publisher,
McGraw-Hill, re-titled Patience & Sarah and became a Literary
Guild selection in 1972. For the next 25 years it appeared in a
succession of paperback editions; it would fade from sight only to
be called out again by lesbians demanding the title in the growing
feminist book markets of the 1970s, '80s, and the early '90s.
Author Routsong signed over the
rights to her story to Kimper and Person in 1993, three years
before she died, saying she knew her "dear girls" would
be in good hands. Her "girls" are two women who live in
rural New England in the early 1800s -- spinsters to the
uninitiated, but our gaydar tells us, though the word
"lesbian" is never used they will (and do) become
lovers. The fact that the characters are based on the sketchy
information about two real women of the period only enhances the
romantic aura of their story. Routsong based Patience White on
legendary folk artist Maryann Willson whose biblical allegories
painted on wood were found from Mobile, Alabama to Canada. Sarah
Dowling is her revered "farmerette companion" alluded to
by a 19th century "Admirer of Art" who wrote:
"These two maids left their home in the East with a romantic
attachment for each other which continued until the death of the
farmer maid. The artist was inconsolable..."
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Peter Berg, Coordinator, Specialized Reference
Excerpt:
The 1994 Michigan Writers Symposium, hosted by
the MSU Libraries, drew more than 200 students, faculty, and
community members. The event, "Lesbian and Gay Voices: A
Tribute to Isabel Miller," honored lesbian writer Alma
Routsong (Isabel Miller).
Born in Traverse City, Michigan, and a 1949
graduate of Michigan State University, Alma Routsong is the author
of the lesbian classic A Place for Us (1969), later
retitled Patience and Sarah (1972). Her writings have long
served as a beacon of light and inspiration among lesbians and
gays. A published author since 1953, Routsong began writing as an
open lesbian in the mid-1960's. "I felt a real need to write
lesbian fiction," she recalls. "I wanted to write for
us." Patience and Sarah is a love story of two women facing
life together on the American frontier almost 200 years ago. Now
considered one of the first contemporary lesbian historical
novels, it had a first printing of only a thousand copies. In 1971
it received the American Library Association's first Gay Book
Award. Routsong's latest novel, A Dooryard Full of Flowers (1993),
explores what happened to Patience and Sarah- -and a good deal
more by providing an authentic view of pre- feminist-movement
lesbian life. Although Alma Routsong was too ill to attend the
symposium, three guests, distinguished in the world of lesbian and
gay literature, were present. They read from their works and
discussed issues in lesbian and gay literature. They were Lev
Raphael, Barbara Grier, and Katherine V. Forrest...
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Names Index:
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