In her utterly original novel about mothers, daughters, and love, Judy Budnitz gives the traditional folktale an electrifying twist as she follows four generations of women from an Eastern European village to the tenements of an American city. Elena, born into a family ruled by a formidable mother, embarks on an epic journey to the New World, met along the way by evil, magic, and good fortune. The daughter, grand-daughter, and great-granddaughter who follow each share her special powers of observation and, often, destruction. The result is a family saga unlike any other: a hilarious, heartbreaking story of family ties that bind.

A blazingly original, profoundly moving new work of fiction by a writer whose world-and imagination-knows no boundaries. I don't know what planet Judy Budnitz comes from, said Newsweek on the publication of her fiction debut, Flying Leap, but I'm happy to have her. Tremendous . . . funny, dark, adventurous, slanted, and enchanted. These twelve astonishingly inventive stories-which take us into the heart of America and around the globe, from suburban backyards and swimming pools to war-torn streets and fallout shelters-are riveting, seductive, and impossible to forget.

In Flush, a mammogram prompts a dark comedy of blurred identities between a mother and her two adult daughters. In Elephant and Boy, a surrogate mother-and-son bond, tinged with the erotic, is formed when a philanthropist attempts to civilize a young elephant handler. Nadia sounds the depths of a young woman's complex feelings toward a friend's mail-order bride from Eastern Europe. Preparedness-an Orwellian tale in Technicolor-imagines rapture in the wake of imminent apocalypse. And in Where We Come From, a pregnant woman's many failed attempts to cross the border do not lessen her resolve to give birth on U.S. soil to a nice big American baby.

Magical, poignant, often transcendent, these are virtuoso modern fables that mine our stores of hidden urges, misunderstandings, and blind passions, inviting us on a voyage through places and times at once deeply familiar and wondrously strange.

'Unforgettable and utterly affecting. You can't turn the pages fast enough' Dave Eggers

Judy Budnitz, author of the Orange Prize shortlisted novel If I Told You Once and the critically acclaimed collection Flying Leap. creates her own brand of stark, dystopian reality in this impressive collection of blisteringly inventive and surreal new stories. Budnitz's first-person narrators are pitch perfect, helping the reader to see from their perspective, no matter how odd it might be. Clever, comic and perpetually surprising, these are stories that demand to be read again and again.

'A truly talented young writer.' Times

These shocking, brilliant, and ultimately beautiful stories chronicle the lives of ordinary people in extraordinary situations. Each tale is laced with enough wit, humor, and imagination to keep the reader constantly amazed. From the young son persuaded to donate his heart to his dying mother, to the girl who befriends a man in a dog suit in post-apocolyptic suburbia, to the man and woman conducting a love affair across a park bench, these characters delight and dazzle.