Short Fiction. In the noisy, crowded kitchens of [Catherine Brady's] working-class Irish American households, proud, strong willed articulate women contend with the challenges of lonliness, poverty, and disabling illness. Blessed -- and cursed -- with a predisposition toward caring for others, Ms. Brady's heroines have an instinctive compassion for the fragile and the needy. They draw strength from their faith and their families to resist despair -- Jennifer C. Cornell). The little girls tumble on the lawn in their pajamas, their damp hair curled in ringlets their mother has carefully shaped around her finger before she let them out into the warm summer night. The girls do cartwheels, somersalts, wobbly headstands. They're a oneness, a jumble of seal-smooth, perfect bodies, sleek bellies bared when they reach their arms, lovely arched feet, firm rumps that could be cupped in two hands. Hiding from the camera, their mother crouches beside their aunt and uncle in their lawn chairs, plump and squat, her body an impossible o