Description: In Back Talk, Joan Weimer weaves together two stories to create "a gripping experiment in creative biography". One story concerns the Victorian writer Constance Fenimore Woolson, whom Henry James called his "gifted, intimate friend". The other narrative traces Weimer's struggle to recreate her life when a serious spine injury halts her work as English professor and activist. Stymied in her research on Woolson, Weimer resorts to imagining dialogues with the writer whose tragic death obsesses her. Woolson's ironic voice and penetrating questions impel Weimer to recognize her own long-silenced desires, to explore the legacies of her own family ghosts, and to glimpse a shimmering world of mystery. In a memoir written with elegance, wit, and unflinching honesty, Weimer's discoveries - imaginative, historical, and personal - illuminate the forces that motivate research and lead to healing.

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