And lifelong learning isn't easy. Age was a help to her. In the title story, Maureen Stephens's supposedly lucky marriage has taken a sexually horrifying turn. And when a local girl disappears from a hiking trip, the lost girl reminds Maureen of how girlhood itself vanishes. She remembers her own secret recklessness.
Fiction is the telling that startles, the telling that teaches.
They yelled at cars in which there were people they knew, and people they didn't know. They spread disorder as if they had every right. You want them to cast a spell, and you can't describe a spell. Still, even an apprentice magician knows that the best effects come when sheer talent is strengthened by careful study of the craft. There is, of course, a hidden local connection.