Excerpt from I Am Agatha by Nancy Foley, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Excerpt
I Am Agatha

The sagebrush hid the reservoir from view until I came upon it. I took off my boots and sat in the shade of a willow tree that trailed its branches into the water. I imagined Alice as a young girl: the cooling evening, her slender wrists dipping into the water to scrub her dress, her mother's impractical pride. Also I thought of myself at the same moment in time, when women gave me odd jobs in exchange for a meal and afterward watched from the porch to be sure I went on my way. I once snuck into a schoolhouse and searched through the lunch pails, my heart twisting at the sound of the children playing outside, their whooping cries moving through me like colorful birds.

Alice pushed through the sagebrush and stepped out of her shoes. She'd brought cornbread wrapped in a cloth and pushed a jar of milk into the mud to keep it cool. The swing of her dress was close enough to touch. But when I reached out my hand, she hesitated and turned away.

We stripped down, she to her underthings and me to my entirety. The reservoir folded up around us as we glided in, our movements making gentle waves that lapped back and forth between us. I felt these waves as a signal of some kind.

Alice dipped her head back briefly so that her hair was wet. Were you ever married? she asked.

Not me.

You never wanted to be?

I never wanted to be.

I did want to be, she said.

The night of her fifteenth birthday Alice quietly took her older sister's Sunday dress off its hook. She put the dress on in the dark and slipped outside, followed a deep arroyo that snaked a mile in the dark. As she walked she gathered the dress in her hands to keep off the dust. Her soon-to-be husband waited for her where the arroyo opened to the road. He held a bouquet of white daisies, their petals luminous under the moon. But the pickup broke down on the road to Santa Fe, and so there was no quiet motel, no soft bed. Instead he carried her from the front seat to the flatbed, and in the night her sister's dress was spoiled and Alice cried; the sky had gone black with no stars. Next morning a car stopped to offer help with the engine, and they made it to the magistrate by noon, before her mother had a say in any of it. I thought he was a gentleman, she said, but I wasn't right about that. It's a sadness to me. I suppose it might have been nice at times, but I can't remember those parts anymore. Now that he has passed, I am trying to forget him. In my head I am trying to be free.

Then she nodded at me, as if wanting a story in return.

I told her how at sixteen I met Ma Binney and her widows on the road to Wichita. When Ma Binney saw me she held up a hand and all the widows quieted behind her. These widows were little sparrows and Ma Binney a hawk, her hair long and cloud white with the end of her braid coiled into the breast pocket of her jacket. But her face was young and at that time she was not yet twenty-five. No widow had fewer years than Ma Binney, but still she was the greatest in age among them, it was something in her very bones.

Ma Binney inspected me as the widows twittered behind her. You better come along with us, she finally said, as you sure look hungry, and we'll have supper in a while.

At night they sang and passed a hat in the pickers' camps. They kept to hymns. No love songs, Ma Binney said, because I'm not in the business of making folks cry. I held a handkerchief so she could wipe her forehead in the heat. She stood very straight while singing but between songs slouched slightly and ran her fingers idly up and down her braid. She looked over at me boldly, her eyes like flames.

When the singing was done Ma Binney brought me back to her tent and cut up a tomato, put it between two slices of bread, and served it to me on a china plate taken from a wooden chest next to her bedroll. Eat up, sweetheart, she said. Her words recalled to me a forgotten place, and I cleaned my plate without a word. Afterward she wiped the plate on her shirttail and put it back in the wooden chest. I asked, Did your hair turn white from losing your husband? She laughed long and loud at that. I was breathless to be so near to her.

Excerpted from I Am Agatha by Nancy Foley. Copyright © 2026 by Nancy Foley. Excerpted by permission of Avid Reader Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.