From the back cover: Anne Sheldon's heroines have lowered eyes and seditious smile. They are people of folklore and fairy tales: Penelope, the Crane Maiden, the Fates. Her heroes are outsiders in their own stories - Rumpelstiltskin and Arachne's father. These fourteen story-poems and stories focus on the work that women do with spinning wheel, spindle, and knitting needles. They are accompanied by the evocative images of these instruments and the cloth they yield. In addition to reworking well-known fairy tales, she has several shining tales of her own making. Under the fluid sign of danger and domesticity - the bone spindle - Anne Sheldon explores earthly and ethereal regions of the feminine.