In nine poignant stories spiked with humor and intelligence, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni captures lives at crossroad moments–caught between past and present, home and abroad, tradition and fresh experience.

A widow in California, recently arrived from India, struggles to adapt to a world in which neighbors are strangers and her domestic skills are deemed superfluous in the award-winning “Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter.” In “The Intelligence of Wild Things,” a woman from Sacramento visits her brother in Vermont to inform him that back in Calcutta their mother is dying. And in the title story, a painter looks to ancient myth and the example of her grandmother for help in navigating her first real crisis of faith.

Contents:

• Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter
• The Intelligence of Wild Things
• The Lives of Strangers
• The Love of a Good Man
• What the Body Knows
• The Forgotten Children
• The Blooming Season for Cacti
• The Unknown Errors of Our Lives
• The Names of Stars in Bengali