Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk Summary
Kathleen Rooney

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk Overview

Kathleen Rooney’s Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk is loosely based on the life of Margaret Fishback, the highest-paid advertising writer in the United States in the 1930s. Told through a series of flashbacks, Lillian Boxfish, now in her 80's, reminisces about her life as she walks through the dangerous streets of New York on New Year’s Eve, 1984. Lillian reflects on her life as an advertising writer and a poet who earned independence and notoriety in New York City during the 1920's, ‘30s, and ‘40s. She considers the choices she made as a wife and mother in the subsequent decades. Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk considers themes of aging, independence, success and failure, and the role chance plays in the big city.