This award-winning story is a wonderful example of Deborah Eisenberg’s unusual writing style. Starting and ending at the same place, the back-story is provided in disjointed fragments that generate a sense of increasing menace as the full picture emerges. A directionless, insecure eighteen-year-old leaves an unfulfilling waitress job to live in an idyllic, off-the-grid cabin with a seemingly perfect man and his infant son. She flees several months later after a brutal beating, leaving readers to ponder the reasons for and wisdom of her abduction of his child. Themes: family, friendship, loneliness, isolation, fear, quest for fulfillment.
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