Eleven short masterworks from this great American writer of catastrophe fiction, in which lives are upended as much by broken hearts as by collapsing dams, vainglorious wars, gargantuan wildfires, and shipwrecks

"Jim Shepard is a fantastic writer-compassionate, funny, and fearless-[whose work] does what great writing always does: inspires us to look more closely at life, and be more caring." -George Saunders

"A deft, audacious artist." -Norman Rush, National Book Award-winning author of Mating

Across centuries and wildly diverse locations, Shepard holds us in his grip. We witness the devastating 1935 Labor Day hurricane in Florida from multiple points of view, read the 1864 letters between Lucy in Boon, North Carolina ("Three privates are currently sleeping soundly on our porch in their muddy blankets") and her great love, William, on the march in Tennessee ("I can't write much for it seems we are looking for a fight every minute"), and in the title story, meet the stubborn Constance, who had "no gift for flirtation" with men, preferring Minna, her best friend and "queen of bad influences," as their devotion unfolds in part on the doomed liner Lusitania.

With irony, compassion, and withering humor, these stories evoke the terrible ease with which catastrophe, human-engineered or otherwise, can sweep away all we find most precious, and expose those limitations we've refused to address. At the same time, Shepard raises up what is best in us: the love and friendships that sustain, and the consolations and sacrifices we provide one another on a beleaguered planet.