Crossing Shattuck Bridge - Tapa dura

Like her first collection ("Lasting Attachments," SMU 1989), Annette Sanford's new gathering of stories demonstrates her vision of the unpredictability of life and the inevitability of loss. Much of the import in these ten stories is evoked and implied, in tightly written sentences in which every word is freighted with meaning. Here again is Sanford's trademark use of a precisely choreographed segue from dialogue to actionswitching without transition and without confusion from one time and scene to anotherin fiction leavened always with her wry and gentle humor. In the title story, two longtime friends returning from a funeral must find a way to cross a fog-shrouded bridge; their mutual terror loosens their tongues and they confess to each other a guilty secret they've hidden for years. In "Housekeeping," when a storm tears a hole in Miss Eloise Bannister's rent house, the itinerant carpenter who volunteers to repair it is so capable and charming he manages to remodel Miss Bannister's life."

A native Texan, ANNETTE SANFORD taught high school English for many years before becoming a full-time writer in the mid-1970s. Her stories have been featured on National Public Radio and have been read at Symphony Space in New York City, and as part of the Texas Bound Literary Series in Dallas. Her stories have been published in McCall's, "Redbook, North American Review, ""Ohio"" Review," and "Southwest Review"; they've been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South, and New Fiction from New England.