In this new and brilliant collection, Munro once more explores the lives of various inhabitants of the countryside and towns around Lake Huron. With her now trademark ability to give us the essence of a life in often brief but spacious- and timeless-feeling stories, Munro illumines the moment a life is shaped – the moment a dream, or sex, or a new way of looking at things, or perhaps just fate turns a person out of his or her accustomed path and into another way of being.

This collection, suffused with Munro's clarity of vision and her unparalleled gift for storytelling – this collection of departures and beginnings, accidents, dangers, and homecomings both virtual and real, paints a vivid and lasting portrait of how strange, dangerous, and remarkable “dear life” can be.