PEAR SEASON: A Collection of Short Stories

These beautiful short stories chronicle a family's life in the Sacramento Delta, a flat expanse of tangled waterways and islands in California's Central Valley. It is a farming life of hopeful springs, backbreaking summers in the orchards and golden autumns, a time for fishing, duck hunting and raising children. Pressures from urbanization and water users in more populated parts of the state are conspiring to drain the water from the Sacramento River and its fragile waterways. The cowboys, taco truck owners, hunters, pear pickers and pot farmers who populate these stories show that it is more than water that the Delta is losing. It is a way of life.

California writer Sally Small grew up in the Sacramento Delta. Her work has appeared in THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, NATURE CONSERVANCY, STANFORD, and THE NEW YORKER. Her novel TWO SLOUGHS published in 2008 and this, her second collection of short stories, chronicle life in the Sacramento Delta with insight and affection.