Description: These eleven stories take us from the Czech Republic to Alaska, from Siberia to West Texas, as they stake out territories straddling the border between life and death. In such wildly inventive ways, Gina Ochsner gives us new means to think about how the dead remain among us and how we can find beauty and solace even in graceless times and places.
Brief description: GINA OCHSNER is the author of The Necessary Grace to Fall, which received the 2001 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction Her stories have appeared in such publications as The Bellingham Review, Image, The New Yorker, Tin House, Iron Horse Review, and The Kenyon Review, and have received numerous awards, including the Ruth Hindman Foundation Prize, the Raymond Carver Prize, and the Chelsea Award for Short Fiction. She is the author of The Hidden Letters of Velta B, The Russian Dreambook of Colour and Flight, and Pleased to be Otherwise, among other books.
Review Quotes:
She is . . . a breath-taking acrobat with image and metaphor, dexterous with point of view. . . . She also reaches back to what matters most: myth, legend, and the healing power of storytelling. . . . The thing about Ochsner's characters is that, though they most assuredly do stumble and fall, they also possess 'the necessary grace' to rise.
--Jill Barnum "North Dakota Quarterly"