In Food for the Winter,Geraldine Connolly recovers the lost world of childhood in the years ofsmall-town America following World War II. The prevailing imagery is that offire, the fire of bombing recollected, the fire of Roman Catholicism, of riflesand steel mills, candles and cigarettes, fires both intellectual and physical,fires of emotion and spirit. Connolly's collection fixes the past and itslosses in place then moves from girlhood themes into the emergence of womanhoodand its passions. The book's real subject is love and the rich and variedpossibilities of human relationships. The rites of passages become more thanthose of an individual life, achieving an identity that both records aparticular moment in time yet transcends a particular human body and names usall as suffers of experience and enjoyers of perceptions.