Korb has a Master's degree in English literature and creative writing and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. In the following essay, she discusses the theme of identity in Talley's Folly.

In his critical study Lanford Wilson, Gene Barnett writes of Talley's Folly, "The familiar motif of the impact of the past on the present underlies the . . . theme of spiritual isolation making real communication difficult." Talley's Folly, one of a trilogy about the Talley family, focuses on the union of two people, both of whom must break free from their solitude in order to join their lives.

On the surface, Matt and Sally seem to have little in common. He is a forty-two-year-old European Jew who works as an accountant in St. Louis. She is a thirty-one-year-old self-described spinster who still lives in her family home in the small town of Lebanon, Missouri. However...