Ranging across two centuries, & from the western Himalaya to an Adirondack village, these wonderfully imagined stories & novellas travel the territories of yearning & awakening, of loss & unexpected discovery. A mapper of the highest mountain peaks realizes his true obsession. A young woman afire with scientific curiosity must come to terms with a romantic fantasy. Brothers & sisters, torn apart at an early age, are beset by dreams of reunion. Throughout, Barrett's most characteristic theme--the happenings in that borderland between science & desire--unfolds in the diverse lives of unforgettable human beings. Although each richly layered tale stands independently, readers of Ship Fever (National Book Award winner) & Barrett's extraordinary novel The Voyage of the Narwhal, will discover subtle links both among these new stories & to characters in the earlier works. Andrea Barrett, who received the National Book Award for Fiction (Ship Fever, 1996), makes her home in Rochester, New York. She teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at the Warren Wilson College, and has also been a visiting writer at numerous colleges, universities, and writers' conferences, including the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She is currently a Fellow at the Center for Writers and Scholars at the New York Public Library. In 2001, Barrett was awarded a MacArthur fellowship |