I searched for stories that get inside the heads of old women. I wanted to gather examples of good aging, of wise or surprising women over sixty and into their nineties, like beads on a string, a secular rosary to help fend off the fear of becoming elderly in a society whose mainstream vision of aging women is marked by fear, loathing, refusal, or reduction.
RUTH O. SAXTON, THE BOOK OF OLD LADIES
I wanted to read the novels in which fictional older women prepare for the journey of aging, inhabit the territory, and become increasingly their truest selves.