Orange World and Other Stories

These eight exuberant, arrestingly vivid, emotionally precise stories present one of America’s most gifted young writers at the top of her form. In “Bog Girl,” a young man falls in love with a two-thousand-year-old girl that he’s extracted from a mass of peat in a Floridian bog. In “The Bad Graft,” a couple on a road trip stop in Joshua Tree National Park, where the spirit of a giant tree accidentally infects the young woman, their fates becoming permanently entangled. In the brilliant, hilarious “Orange World,” a new mother desperate to ensure her daughter’s health strikes a diabolical deal—she agrees to breastfeed the devil in exchange for his protection. In “The Prospectors,” two opportunistic young women fleeing the depression strike out for new territory, and find themselves fighting for their lives. Survival stories, love stories, stories of surreal and magnificent transformation—this is haunting and beautiful work from a true modern master.