Pride and Prejudice: The Fifth Daughter

Luo Huilin woke beneath a blaze of dazzling sunlight.

Her last memory was of a seat by the window on the fourth floor of the library. The open Norton Anthology of English Literature lay at Chapter Eighteen, and the bottom of her coffee cup had left a pale brown ring on the page. She remembered staring blankly at the title “Pride and Prejudice,” her mind still turning over next week's term paper: the hidden class anxieties and women's writing strategies in the 1813 first edition. Then the plane tree outside swayed, the sunlight shattered into gold, and then

Then came now.