Dyer holds a Ph.D. in English literature and has published extensively on fiction, poetry, film, and television. He is also a freelance university teacher, writer, and educational consultant. In the following essay, he explores the dynamics and politics of Mary McDonald’s retrospective reading of the town of Booth’s Landing.

Peter Baida’s “A Nurse’s Story” is written in an episodic style that accentuates the links between the remembered episodes that constitute Mary McDonald’s fragmented life review. At the same time, the story illuminates the layers of stories that come from the history of a small town. Openings and closings accumulate slowly in the story, turning “A Nurse’s Story” into a kind of archaeological site within which layers of memory blend together, making reading the story a process of sifting through and...