Necessary Fictions

As they contemplate what might have been, three protagonists succumb to an abiding sense of melancholy in the first half of this finely wrought collection of 10 stories, winner of the 1998 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. In ""Three Weeks in Italy and France,"" a woman recalls her close friendship with a fellow artist, now dead, and the particulars of a shared youthful journey that ended in a jealous rift. A grown woman looks back to childhood and admires her mother's prodigious sacrifice in ""Bonaparte."" At the center of ""Dark Matter"" lies a son's inability to grieve for a father who never appreciated him. In the novella and connected stories of Part Two, a daughter searches for family truths in a narrative that spans 30 years. Maggie's father, WWII veteran Raymond Gerhardt, was a hard-working carpenter who relentlessly pursued the American dream until depression consumed him. Maggie's mother, Ruth, a reluctant homemaker who longs to write poetry, refuses to admit that her husband may have committed suicide. Both women worry about Ray Jr., an aimless alcoholic whose Bronze Star may not have been justly earned in Vietnam. Maggie's husband, Bill, is a war casualty of a different sort; a draft dodger who sought refuge in Canada, he assuages his guilt by working as an orderly in a VA hospital. The ambiguities in their lives, their different perceptions of events and the ""necessary fictions"" that make tragedies bearable are Croft's focus. ""In the last analysis, our story exists in the tales we do not tell,"" one character says. Croft's ear for dialogue is keen and accurate, her descriptions painterly, her characterizations spare and on the mark. This work shows more of the quiet but accomplished craftsmanship already demonstrated in Croft's previous collection, Primary Colors and Other Stories. (Oct.)