Rustic Studies in the Westmorland Dialect: With Other Scraps from the Sketch Book of an Artist (1868)

A Desolate Woman tells the tragedy of seventeen-year-old Mara, who is eager to conquer life. Mara is an average girl who is working hard toward her dreams and ambitions. Suddenly her world comes to a crashing end when she is raped at a party by her best friendas boyfriend. Mara sadly finds herself pregnant and HIV positive. The relationships that she previously valued lose all of their significance. The once inspirational, determined, and positive girl becomes a mean, bitter and hateful woman. Her daughter, the product of her rape, Chelsey, tries her best to encourage her mother to give her pain to God before she dies. A Desolate Woman is the journey of a woman caught between tragedy and triumph whose only question to God is why.