In "Pittsburgh in Copenhagen," a man and a woman confront infidelity and estrangement as they share one last night together. "Pétur" tells the tale of a son who takes his mother on an Icelandic vacation only to be stranded there by a volcanic eruption. "Rusalka's Long Legs" follows a young girl's treacherously long walk through the woods with her unpredictable mother. And in "The Visigoths," an older sister finally breaks through to her idiosyncratic brother.

With precision and grace, the thirteen stories in this collection capture the fragility of troubled lives caught in disrupted turbulence, moments of connection--no matter how fleeting. Through these intimate, profoundly moving worlds, Clare's voice rises as a distinctive new American storyteller.