Small Spaces Between Emergencies

Moore's noteworthy debut collection of 11 stories features restless, lonely individuals who invite strangers into their lives. These characters often lose a parent or mate to death or divorce, and their quests to recapture feelings of wholeness yield unexpected resolutions. In the affecting ``Leaving by the Window,'' a widowed man compulsively visits sites from his past and brags of his youthful adventures until his impressionable daughter's own wanderlust brings heartbreak. Another strong tale, ``Lake Effect,'' describes an angry, jilted Arizona woman who drives throughout California to perform an improvised cleansing ritual in various lakes and finds true salvation in her blind trust of a fellow vagabond. The poignant ``News from Another World'' introduces a Brooklyn nursing home resident who temporarily kidnaps a baby and escapes to a local park, pleased that, if only for a few hours, she appears as a self-sufficient grandmother with family of her own. The desperate intensity that fuels Moore's protagonists is portrayed more effectively in some of these tales than in others, but on the whole, grief, disappointment, optimism and recovery are depicted memorably. (June)