Betts, Doris. Heading West (New York: Knopf, 1981) 359 p.

Nancy Finch is assistant librarian at the Greenway Branch of Stone County Library in North Carolina. The head librarian is Miss Boykin, a sixty-six year old "fixture." A frequenter of the library is Evaline Sample, a sometime sanatarium inmate and electroshock therapy recipient who copies pictures from books. Nancy is kidnapped and taken to the Grand Canyon. For Nancy the life of a librarian is an escape from taking control of her own life. Toward the end of the story, she fears the library will kill her independence: "... as Nancy walked toward the parlor mirror her enlarging face grew more and more a librarian's; she marked how the mouth was pursing and closing up, presumably to keep titles and quotations from spilling everywhere.... Probably in an autopsy no one would be able to tell her lymph fluid from library paste." (p. 342).