In her first collection of short stories, Beth Goldner looks at loss-of love, of health, of life-through the lives of ordinary women in extraordinary circumstances . The women of Wake are suffering-or have suffered-a profound loss, loss that has left them seeking renewal or perhaps just escape. Sometimes they long for a husband, a baby, a trinket, sometimes for something far more elusive. In the title story, two sisters are slowly losing their parents to mental illness. In Cardiff-by-the-Sea, a man who lost his sight in Vietnam is reborn through a new relationship with a daughter he didn't...