The Captivity of Pixie Shedman
by Romulus Linney

THE STORY: Attempting a novel based on his late grandmother's diary, Bertram Shedman, a struggling young writer, is bemused by her extravagant tales and high-flown poetry.

Trying to sort out the truth of this remarkable and singular woman he conjures up the fleshly spirit of Pixie herself—as she steps into the action of the play and attempts to persuade this quizzical young man that the lurid events and twisted relationships put down in her family history are indeed the stuff of real life.

Their confrontation brings forth other ghosts; his domineering great-grandfather, who whisked Pixie off to Washington after his election as a U.S.

Senator; his hard-drinking physician grandfather, who stole Pixie away from his father but looked for solace in the arms of a local waitress; and his own unhappy father, who led a life ordained by others and died of cancer while still a young man.

In the end these apparitions step back into the past once more, but their legacy is now one of truth and a guide to the present descendant in reconciling the tangled strands of his own life.