Fiction. "A young woman's body lay undisturbed for a week in mid-November." So begins SHELTER HALF, Carol Bly's novel about a few people in a northern Minnesota town. Some of them-the town cop, the doctor, and a young couple in love-are smart enough to recognize cruelty that comes at them from huge organizations far outside the town limits. They are not chicken. They don't duck. If their nation and their world look grisly, they still do what they can for love and justice. They look out for one another. In the end, a retired US Brigadier General brings them a surprise about one of their best-loved townspeople. "Carol Bly . . . is fully responsive to the evils done in our name and with our tacit consent." --Tobias Wolff.

Carol Bly (1930-2007) is the author of Letters from the Country, The Tomcat's Wife, My Lord Bag of Rice: New and Selected Stories, and Changing the Bully Who Rules the World. Her stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories; several Pushcart Collections, including the twenty-five-year anniversary edition; The New Yorker; Ploughshares; Glimmer Train (May 2008); and other journals. She lived in St. Paul and Sturgeon Lake, Minnesota. Shelter Half is Carol Bly's first and only published novel.

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