This book of nine short stories spans the decades and always dives deep into its characters' psyches. In the first story which is the title of this collection, a housekeeper/nanny slips away from her employer in order to pursue a romantic relationship she believes has developed through letter writing but has actually been contrived by her devious charge and her friend. In "Floating Bridge" a young woman with cancer dreamily contemplates her slipping-away life in a corn field and shortly thereafter shares a beautiful kiss with a random, very young man. "Family Furnishings" is narrated by a young woman whose life is impacted by her father's cousin showing her character as a child: just before her mother dies of horrible burns from a house fire, she is told that she wouldn't want to see her mother that way. The girl then declares, "but she would want to see me!"
The story titled "Comfort" features a man dying of a horrible neurological disease who takes his own life but cheats his wife out of any kind of goodbye. In "Nettles" a divorced woman runs into a childhood love at a friend's house and learns of a devastating incident that the friend and his wife must live with. "Post and Beam" reveals the burden a young married woman feels by a visit from an older cousin; she then worries over that cousin taking her own life while in her home. "Queenie" is a tale about two stepsisters - one who follows and marries a contemptuous older man and the other who yearns for the first to break free. The final story titled "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" tells of an elderly couple and the heartbreaking decision the husband must make in putting his dementia addled wife in a nursing home and then witnessing her falling for another resident while seeming to forget about him.
In reading this collection it always seemed as if the narrative would take one turn but then it would follow another completely unexpected turn. This is an emotional, impactful and absorbing set of fiction and the title aptly sums up the theme.
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