Susan Midalias second collection of short stories offers us a compelling variety of characters,
all of them travellers in search of connection and belonging. Tourists in Moscow and Vienna confronted by the weight of history. A young student teacher discovering her capacity for compassion. A teenage boy defending his mothers reputation. A brother anguished by his sisters illness. A widow infatuated with a troubled young man. Conflicts between the silent burdens of the past and the dramas of everyday lives. Written with eloquence, grace and emotional generosity, the stories in this collection seek to understand people rather than to judge them, and invite us to reflect on the longings and regrets that make up who we are. Susan Midalias stories are about ordinary people and the secrets and fears that lie beneath the cracked veneer of domesticity and suburban complacency.
