The Perfect Sonya

Actress Pauline Terry is so successful in a performance of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya that one critic calls her "the perfect Sonya." But her life is not what she expected when she left Texas for Broadway. She swims in a fish tank in a New Jersey bar to make a living, most auditions do not result in callbacks, and her marriage is shaky.

Called home by her father's imminent death, she confronts both the past she thought she'd left behind and her uncertain future. For solace she turns to her aunt's former husband, Will Hand, a professor and nature writer. But their affair is brief and leaves her more uncertain than ever.

Back in New York, Pauline realizes that her life onstage cannot make up for the emptiness of her life offstage. Her return to Texas was a transforming experience, leading her ultimately to come to terms with her childhood memories, her marriage, her dramatic ambitions, and finally, herself.

The Perfect Sonya, first published in 1987 by Viking Penguin, won the Jesse Jones Award for the Best Novel of 1987 from the Texas Institute of Letters.


About the Author
Beverly Lowry is the author of the novels Breaking Gentle, Daddy's Girl, Emma Blue, and Come Back Lolly Ray, along with the nonfiction Crossed Over and the new Her Dream of Dreams. She has published short stories, essays, and book reviews and received awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others. She lives in Austin.