With this new collection of nine seamlessly told stories, Mary Borsky demonstrates why she is one of our very best practitioners of the short fiction form. These exquisitely drawn and poignant tales are about women who lead ordinary lives, but who strive for independence and identity, who seek fulfillment in love, but who are often checked by uncertainty, fear, family, children, parents, and lovers. A woman leaves her anthropologist husband when she sees that he cannot relate to her family. A single mother"s relationship with a wedding photographer founders on her young daughter"s sulky resistance to their union. A troubled young son tests the limits of a mother"s unconditional love. An old lover tries to renew an affair with a woman who yearns for love but hesitates to commit to him. A simple small town water-man protects a pregnant teenager from her bullying boyfriend.