I love the voice this author uses in this book, wry and deadpan humorous and taking note of the woes of the world without turning nasty over it, mired deep in family while clear-eyed about the battles and bubblings that have seethed since childhood. This is billed as a collection of short stories, and they are, each story standing on its own merit. But together they tell the story of the narrator's family, a large family led by parents almost defeated by the struggle to live and prosper, the children wounded in different ways growing up, but still coming together on the ancestral rural land where they are building cabins, because they don't know how to stay away from each other, nor how to get past their childhoods when they do gather. This is a wry, rewarding group of stories, together telling a story of the narrator's life and family. For some reason the narrator and her stories make me think of Linda Miller, and I have to figure a way to get this book into her hands. ( )