A superb new collection from one of our best and best-loved writers. Nine stories draw us immediately into that special place known as Alice Munro territory-a place where an unexpected twist of events or a suddenly recaptured memory can illumine the arc of an entire life. Men and women are subtly revealed. Personal histories, both complex and simple, unfold in rich detail of circumstance and feeling. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage...

Twenty-eight stories set in farms and small towns around Lake Huron. They include Dance of the Happy Shades, on a retired piano teacher, and Walker Brothers Cowboy, on two children making calls with their salesman father during the 1930s depression.

Fifteen stories about life in rural Ontario deal with adolescence, loneliness, broken hearts, an abandoned wife, family relations, blind dates, and an aspiring writer.