The Balm of Gilead Tree — Robert Morgan

Fiction. Robert Morgan has had four NEA Fellowships as well as Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation fellowships. Ten powerful new stories are collected here for the first time and seven are reprinted from his two acclaimed earlier collections. Morgan has a deft touch for the nuances of family ties, and his characters in this realistic, evocative and often lyrical collection are formidable and well-drawn -- Publishers Weekly. This beautifully crafted collection ... a procession of tales rich with narrative detail and character, told in language as plain and deep as the hills, the whole weighted with an awareness of death that looms over the the struggle for a meaningful life -- New York Times Book Review.