A blazingly original, profoundly moving new work of fiction by a writer whose worldβand imaginationβknows no boundaries. βI donβt know what planet Judy Budnitz comes from,β said Newsweek on the publication of her fiction debut, Flying Leap, βbut Iβm happy to have her. Tremendous . . . funny, dark, adventurous, slanted, and enchanted.β These twelve astonishingly inventive storiesβwhich take us into the heart of America and around the globe, from suburban backyards and swimming pools to war-torn streets and fallout sheltersβare riveting, seductive, and impossible to forget.
In βFlush,β a mammogram prompts a dark comedy of blurred identities between a mother and her two adult daughters. In βElephant and Boy,β a surrogate mother-and-son bond, tinged with the erotic, is formed when a philanthropist attempts to βcivilizeβ a young elephant handler. βNadiaβ sounds the depths of a young womanβs complex feelings toward a friendβ s mail-order bride from Eastern Europe. βPreparednessββan Orwellian tale in Technicolorβimagines rapture in the wake of imminent apocalypse. And in βWhere We Come From,β a pregnant womanβs many failed attempts to cross the border do not lessen her resolve to give birth on U.S. soil to a βnice big American baby.β
Magical, poignant, often transcendent, these are virtuoso modern fables that mine our stores of hidden urges, misunderstandings, and blind passions, inviting us on a voyage through places and times at once deeply familiar and wondrously strange.