Crossing Shattuck Bridge: Stories

Like her first collection (Lasting Attachments, SMU, 1989), Annette Sanford's new gathering of stories demonstrates her vision of the unpredictability of life and the inevitability of loss. Much of the import in these ten stories is evoked and implied, in tightly written sentences in which every word is freighted with meaning. Here again is Sanford's trademark use of a precisely choreographed segue from dialogue to action -- switching without transition and without confusion from one time and scene to another -- in fiction leavened always with her wry and gentle humor.

In the title story, two longtime friends returning from a funeral must find a way to cross a fog-shrouded bridge; their mutual terror loosens their tongues and they confess to each other a guilty secret they've hidden for years.