A Cowardly Woman No More

Over the course of one fateful day, Trisha Donahue begins to reclaim her courage and discovers secrets in a familiar place. A surprising, quietly dramatic adventure story infused with Ellen Cooney’s warm humor and wisdom.

After years of skilled work and dedication, Trisha Donahue is denied a well-earned promotion by her company’s male executives, who give it instead to an underqualified man. Devastated, forty-four-year-old Trisha begins to reckon with the demands that exhaust her, the injustices that confront her, and the ways she has betrayed herself “just to fit in” with coworkers who resent and belittle her abilities. But at the Rose & Emerald—a unique rural restaurant Trisha has loved since childhood—her company’s annual Banquet Day sets in motion a surprising adventure, revealing unexpected allies, hidden passageways, and an interstellar secret. Encouraged by a vivid cast of characters, from sympathetic coworkers to the mysterious employees of the fabled Rose & Emerald, Trisha makes a decision that will change her professional and personal life forever. From acclaimed author Ellen Cooney, A Cowardly Woman No More is a lively, luminous novel about a wife, mom, and career woman who brings herself first nervously, then more and more bravely, through a monumental transformation.

Publication date: April 4, 2023 

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.25

Page count: 224 pages 

ISBN: 9781566896719

Ellen Cooney is the author of ten previous novels. Her stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Ontario Review, New England Review, and many other journals, and have been included several times in The Best American Short Stories anthologies. She has received fellowships from the National Foundation for the Arts and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, and has taught creative writing at Boston College, the Harvard Extension School, and MIT. A native of Massachusetts, she lives on the Phippsburg Peninsula in midcoast Maine.

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2023

“This elegant and off-kilter upending of the office novel sings.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Cooney’s great skill as we press against the limits of the real is that we are with her in every moment; her language is unshowy, matter-of-fact, human, and she is also open—and opens us—to the inexplicable, the wild magic, the stuff we can’t make sense of all the way.”

—Nina MacLaughin, The Boston Globe

"Cooney is remarkably adept at capturing minute inner crises within an individual and the imperfect but real connections between people."

—Kirkus

“The engaging directness of [Trisha's] narrative—its spokenness, sharpness of vision and recall, and willingness to place an exclamation point at the end of a sentence when she amazes herself—comprises her bravery.”

—Ron Slate, On the Seawall

“A Cowardly Woman No More is a feminist novel, but it’s more than a Me Too tale on gender equity and equality. It asks us to look closely at ourselves and wonder if we’ve let daily living take the joy out of life.”

—Lorraine Kleinwaks, Enchanted Prose

“Masterfully told, full of surprise, built from unforgettable sentences that sing, whisper, or shout, A Cowardly Woman No More is utterly compelling from its first fiery comet of a page to its last.”

—Laird Hunt