YA-- The voices and stories in this small collection ring with truth as if Sanford had been copying down bits of dialogue and neighborhood gossip for years. Not big stories, these tell of everyday events in the lives of average people. The title comes from the story of Harry and Lucille, who take up an ongoing relationship with two strangers in an old photograph. In "Living," readers meet Amos, an old widower whose life has risen and fallen with the influence of his wife. Now that she is gone, he has fallen back to his old ways, with the cats having the run of the house and the shed lying unrepaired. Husbands and wives, old cousins, unwed mothers, widowers, bereaved parents, and devoted daughters--all have an honesty and simplicity of life that readers of Sarah Orne Jewett, Gail Godwin, and maybe even John Updike will like. The short lines and choppy dialogue make the stories quick to read; strange tales such as "Twilight," in which a recent widower succumbs to the strange advances of Katerina, an acquaintance of his dead wife, will make readers laugh aloud.
- Carolyn Praytor Boyd, Episcopal High School, Bellaire, TX
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Many of these 11 gentle, finely tuned stories, all set in Texas, deftly capture the nuances of shifting family relationships. In "The Girls in the Garden," a 12-year-old gradually realizes that life with her grandmother is far more rewarding than it might be if she lived with her mother and her mother's attentive new husband. "Trip in a Summer Dress" concerns the reluctant decision of a young woman, about to be married, to leave her illegitimate son behind with her mother, who has created the fiction that the child is her own. In "Six White Horses," the tranquil routine of an elderly brother and sister is forever shattered by the sister's rejection of a marriage-minded traveling salesman. Some of these stories deal with alliances formed between the young and the very old; a few evolve from the small, vital support groups that spring up between family members. Pulsing with quick humor, keen insight and a feel for small-town life, the tales hold a sweetness that just stops short of being saccharine.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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