Overturning our grasp of what is civil and what is wild, Marc Peter Keane's collection of nine short stories revels in the illusory space between culture and nature. A garden designer by trade, Keane forays into fiction with the wisdom and sure-footedness of someone all too familiar with manipulating the boundaries of the natural world. In "A Peaceable Kingdom," the tranquil lives of a picture-postcard American family are bewildered by discoveries of untamable nature. A girl made mute by the violence of her childhood finds solace in the orderly house and pruned gardens of her uncle's country...