cover image With the Snow Queen

With the Snow Queen

Joanne Greenberg. Arcade Publishing, $19.95 (321pp) ISBN 978-1-55970-110-5

At least four of the 14 stories in Greenberg's collection deserve to be classics. Writing in a futuristic vein, the author invests the title story with universal resonance. When a woman on a planet where fear and repression are endemic applies for a time-travel pass to her past life on earth, she falls in love with a man who does not know her identity and unwittingly becomes the agent of tragedy. Here, as throughout the collection--in ``Elizabeth Baird,'' about a gentle woman whose slight cerebral lesion causes behavior that sets her apart; ``Stand Still, Ute River,'' a quiet tale about the casting out of sins that ends with a provocative twist; and the wry ``Retrieval,'' in which an elderly heroine repeatedly witnesses to scenes of violence--Greenberg's stories are ironically nuanced, tough in their implications but tender in their sympathy for the human condition. Though many of these tales are set in Colorado, some add a dimension of magical realism. In two darkly humorous stories characters come alive to the writers who created them. ``Like a Native'' draws on Greenberg's special knowledge of Sign language and the world of the deaf and dumb. Although she sometimes over-reaches for effect, at their best Greenberg's stories have emotional depth and compassion, psychological acuity and the implication of moral consequences. (Apr.)