In 1916, Sisters Idella and Avis Hillock live on the edge of a chilly bluff in New Brunswick, Canada, a hardscrabble world of potato farms, rough men, hard work, and baffling beauty. From "Gone," the heartbreaking account of the crisis that changed their lives forever, to the darkly comic "Wake," which follows the grown siblings' catastrophic efforts to escort the body of their father "Wild Bill" Hillock to his funeral, these stories of Idella and Avis offer a compelling and wry vision of two remarkable women. The vivid characters include Idella's philandering husband, her bewilderingly difficult mother-in-law, and Avis, whose serial romantic disasters never quell her irrepressible spirit. Jensen's work evokes a time gone by and reads like an instant American classic.

BEVERLY JENSEN earned an MFA in drama from Southern Methodist University. She died of cancer in 2003 at the age of forty-nine without publishing her work. Since her death, her fiction has been championed by a dedicated group of supporters, including Stephen King and Joyce Carol Oates. After her death, her story "Wake" was published in the New England Review, included in The Best American Short Stories 2007, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is survived by her husband, Jay Silverman, and their two children.