How Strange a Season

';Dazzling.' The New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice ';Richly satisfying.' The Wall Street Journal ';These are stories you want to live ina collection perfectly suited for our moment.' Booklist (starred review) A collection of stories ';so beautifully crafted they feel like tiny worlds unto themselves' (Los Angeles Times) about women experiencing all life's beauty and challenges, from award-winning writer Megan Mayhew Bergman.A recently separated woman fills a huge terrarium with rare flowers to establish control over a small world and attempt to heal her broken heart. A competitive swimmer negotiates over which days she will fulfill her wifely duties, and which days she will keep for herself. A peach farmer wonders if her orchard will survive a drought. And generations of a family in South Carolina struggle with fidelity and their cruel past, some clinging to old ways and others painfully carving new paths. In this ';closely observed' (The New Yorker) collection, Megan Mayhew Bergman portrays women who wrestle with problematic inheritances: a modern glass house on a treacherous California cliff, a water-starved ranch, and an abandoned plantation on a river near Charleston. ';Bergman's stories are so emotionally rich that they serve as portals into distinct interior worlds...this collection is distinct and vivid...As singular as it is atmospheric' (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).