There is a remarkable magic in these eight matchless stories—stories set in Ontario, Australia, Europe; in dangerous mountains, forbidding wilderness, familiar towns. In the title story, a lawyer’s wife has a flash of insight—illogical, unprovable, and terrifying—into the fate of a missing teenager; in another, the appearance of a long-dead visitor reveals the grip of a former love. Munro tells of vanished schoolgirls and indentured frontier brides and an eccentric recluse who, in the course of one surpassingly odd dinner party, inadvertently lands herself a wealthy suitor. 
Yet the true magic lies in the way that Alice Munro makes everything here—unexpected marriages, elopements, acts of sudden vengeance—unfold with the ease of the inevitable. This is the mark of a great writer, and it is stamped on every page of this book.