Things We Lost, Gave Away, Bought High and Sold Low: Stories

Set primarily in small-town New England, the 11 stories in this debut collection focus on the small, accidental twists that alter the directions of ordinary lives. In the title piece, a divorced woman remembers an old Oriental rug she came across years ago, when she was a young housewife and mother. The fisherman who owned it refused to sell, but the rug and her passionate desire to own it remain vivid in her memory 20 years later: ``If I had gotten the beautiful Hamadan it might have eased the unhappiness of those times and changed the nomadic direction my life took on.'' ``The Marriage of Josie Woodmansee'' depicts a chance encounter between the town spinster and the town drunk, a man she knew as a child in school; she stops, shares a beer, marries him and finds unexpected happiness. In ``At the Fly Fishing School,'' a young woman taking fishing lessons in order to get closer to her lover, an avid trout fisherman, discovers that there is a ``natural law of placement,'' a certain distance that must be maintained by those fishing the same river. These quiet vignettes express the longing we all feel for the irretrievable. ( Dec. )