The magic of ordinary days

The Magic of Ordinary Days is a novel by the American writer Ann Howard Creel, published in 2001 by Viking. It is set during the Second World War, and its narrator is Olivia Dunne, whose graduate work on the archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann has been set aside by the events of the war.

Olivia's trouble begins with a short affair with a naval flight instructor, Edward Brown, who is posted away. Rather than let his daughter's pregnancy become known, her father arranges a marriage with a stranger, and Olivia travels to a farm in southeastern Colorado to live with Ray Singleton, a widower's son who has lost both parents and his younger brother, Daniel, at Pearl Harbor. He works his family's land, says little, and takes her circumstances without complaint. Livy finds arrowheads on the farm, writes letters to Edward that go unanswered, and is visited by her sister, who urges her to leave Ray and invent a husband's violence to justify a separation.

The friendships that hold Olivia in place are with two Japanese American sisters who are living at a nearby internment camp, and the novel follows her across a countryside where young men are away and the people left behind are watched.