In this stunning collection of stories, bestselling author Ursula Hegi focuses on the problems of love-- familial, parental, conjugal, and emergent. With compassion and her "unfailing immediacy of language", she raises the struggles of her characters to a plane of recognition that enables them to transcend despair. Life and death, age and youth, attained hopes and unearned pleasures, provide the human settings for a brilliant exploration of life at its most pointed and significant.