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FICTION

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ENTERING EPHESUS by Daphne Athas (Second Chance Press: $24.95; 442 pp.). Published in 1971 to good reviews, Daphne Athas’ story of the Bishop family coping with its fall from fortune during the Depression deserves retelling (although it should have been resurrected with a new title, too; this one gives limp a new meaning!). Moving from relative grandeur in the north, the Bishop clan, headed by the inept P. Q.--student of many business enterprises, successful at none--has ended up in a shack on the edge of Ephesus, N.C. It’s impossible to read “Entering Ephesus” without drawing comparisons with characters from “Little Women.” But it’s a fascinating story of a proud family hanging onto its past as the girls, each in her distinctive way, come of age in the years preceding World War II.

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