The Summer Before the Summer of Love: Stories by - Softcover

In "The Other Widow", a grieving mistress meets her deceased lover's wife; in "Crete", a woman who once escaped a grisly murder now finds herself struggling with the death of her daughter, and the fear that her baby's life was taken because her own had been spared; in the title story, a girl takes a road trip to a Beatles concert with her mother and sister, and faces the difficult emotional balancing act posed by her parents' recent separation.

One of Swick's great distinctions is the way she evokes each character's struggle to become whole again in a style that is as exquisite as it is unsentimental. Few writers are able to write about their characters so warmly or intimately. Fewer still can create a truer sense of the way people really do live, and love -- and do so with such grace, intelligence and humor.

Swick is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a James Michener Award, and an O. Henry Award. Her first book received the Iowa Short Fiction Award. Her stories have appeared in numerous publications, among them The Atlantic, Redbook, and The North American Review. She has just written her first novel, Paper Wings.

Upholding a self-professed "Victorian lifestyle in the 90s," Marly Swick enjoys painting and reading in her spare time. She is currently an Associate Professor of Fiction Writing at the University of Nebraska and lives in Lincoln.