The Happy Family — Patricia Zelver

When his wife died, Teddy Oliver inherited a fortune and a family-three teenage daughters as eccentric as money, a doting father, and living on the San Francisco Peninsula could make them. The story bisects the mythological subculture of California-a mix of studied freedom of ideas, dress, "lifestyle," and sex. ." Patricia Zelver's humor is like a kitten hiding behind the sofa waiting to dart out and take a couple of slaps and dash back in. Her stories make me do what I practically never do, laugh out loud (what's to laugh at most of the time?)."-Wallace Stegner