The Women of Troy Hill: The Back-Fence Virtues of Faith and Friendship

""For the most part, they know one another by face, name and by the colors of their winter coats, their paths crossing less from formal introduction than from spending a lifetime in such a little place."" In describing this German-Catholic neighborhood high above Pittsburgh's city center, Ansberry (the bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal) skillfully evokes a microcosm of urban life, a place that has changed little over the greater part of the last century, inhabited mostly by older women in their 70s and 80s. Ansberry aims to get to know six of these women (she sees ""bits and pieces of my own mother, her mother and sisters"" in them) and to demonstrate how their collective knowledge of ""what ultimately succeeds and what fails"" is representative of the lives of elderly women across the U.S.Dnow the fastest-growing segment of our population. They describe themselves as women who ""neighbored,"" meaning they have long occupied their time with looking in on the homebound, cooking for the recently bereaved and taking a leading role in a variety of church and neighborhood events. For example, Mary Wohleber, now widowed, fought with fierce determination to raise money to restore Troy Hill's chapel, but her interests have also taken her to such exotic locales as Sri Lanka, Tibet and Syria. Those interested in women's history and close-up shots of life in the U.S. will enjoy this anecdotal study of an insular community. (Nov. 10)