These thirteen stories by acclaimed writer Valerie Miner explore family and intimacy in ways that are simultaneously surprising and deeply familiar
The complex nature of relationships is at the foreground of this poignant and tender collection. In the opening story, a father's lonely death causes his children to reconsider their family life. In another tale, a stalwart woman's fight to save an old olive tree in a rapidly transitioning San Francisco unexpectedly turns into a brutal battle.
Miner's prose is intensely personal and suffused with warmth. Populated by characters being tested by their own lives, these insightful stories offer readers keenly felt portraits of people in transition.

Valerie Miner is the award-winning author of fourteen books, including novels, short fiction collections, and nonfiction. Miner's work has appeared inthe Georgia Review, TriQuarterly, Salmagundi, New Letters, Ploughshares, the Village Voice, Prairie Schooner, the Gettysburg Review, the Times Literary Supplement, the Women's Review of Books, the Nation,and other journals. Her stories and essays have been published in more than sixty anthologies. A number of her pieces have been dramatized on BBC Radio 4. Her work has been translated into German, Turkish, Danish, Italian, Spanish, French, Swedish, and Dutch. She has won fellowships and awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the Heinz Foundation, the Bogliasco Foundation, Fundación Valparaiso, the Australia Council Literary Arts Board, and numerous other organizations. She has received Fulbright fellowships to Tunisia, India, and Indonesia. Winner of a Distinguished Teaching Award, she has taught for over twenty-five years and is now a professor and artist in residence at Stanford University. She travels internationally giving readings, lectures, and workshops. Her website iswww.valerieminer.com.

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• On Earth
• Appoggiatura
• Until Spring
• Fire at the Farm
• The Sense of Distant Touch
• Palace of Physical Culture
• Japanese Vase
• Impermanence
• Magic Peppers
• Flat World
• The Best Sex Ever
• Broken Membranes
• The Night Singers
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Copyright Page