Best known for his first novel, Mrs. Bridge (1959), and an imaginatively constructed biography of General George Custer, Son Of The Morning Star (1985), Evan S. Connell has twice been nominated for the National Book Award and in 1987 received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature. In a Salon.com profile published in 2000, Greg Bottoms described Connell as "a trailblazer, a troubadour, one of the first to put the literary scalpel to the suburban skin."

The following narrative sketch, from the final chapter of Mrs. Bridge, offers an image of entrapment that is both frightening and absurd. (Note that this passage served as the basis for our exercise Sentence Combining: "Mrs. Bridge.")

Hello?

from Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell*

One December morning near the end of the year when snow was falling moist and heavy for miles all around, so that the earth and the sky were indivisible, Mrs. Bridge emerged from her home and spread her umbrella. With small cautious steps she proceeded to the garage, where she pressed the button and waited impatiently for the door to lift. She was in a hurry to drive downtown to buy some Irish lace antimacassars that were advertised in the newspaper, and she was planning to spend the remainder of the day browsing through the stores because it was Harriet's day off and the house was empty--so empty.

She had backed just halfway out of the garage when the engine died. She touched the starter and listened without concern because, despite her difficulties with the Lincoln, she had grown to feel secure in it.

The Lincoln was a number of years old and occasionally recalcitrant, but she could not bear the thought of parting with it, and in the past had resisted this suggestion of her husband, who, mildly puzzled by her attachment to the car, had allowed her to keep it.

Thinking she had flooded the engine, which was often true, Mrs. Bridge decided to wait a minute or so.

Presently, she tried again, and again, and then again. Deeply disappointed, she opened the door to get out and discovered she had stopped in such a position that the car doors were prevented from opening more than a few inches on one side by the garage partition, and on the other side by the wall. Having tried all four doors, she began to understand that until she could attract someone's attention she was trapped. She pressed the horn, but there was not a sound. Half inside and half outside she remained.

For a long time she sat there with her gloved hands folded in her lap, not knowing what to do. Once she looked at herself in the mirror. Finally she took the keys from the ignition and began tapping on the window, and she called to anyone who might be listening. "Hello? Hello out there?"

But no one answered, unless it was the falling snow.

Selected Works by Evan S. Connell

• Mrs. Bridge, novel (1959)
• The Patriot, novel (1960)
• At the Crossroads, short stories (1965)
• Diary of a Rapist, novel (1966)
• Mr. Bridge, novel (1969)
• The Connoisseur, novel (1974)
• A Long Desire, historical essays (1979)
• The White Lantern, historical essays (1980)
• Son Of The Morning Star: Custer And The Little Bighorn, nonfiction (1985)
• The Aztec Treasure House: New and Selected Essays (2001)
• Lost in Uttar Pradesh: New and Selected Stories (2008)

* Mrs. Bridge, by Evan S. Connell, was first published by the Viking Press in 1959. It is currently available in a paperback edition published by Counterpoint (2005).