This is a collection of 11 stories, in which women make discoveries about love, men, relationships, families and life in their contemporary Canadian small town. The characters who populate an Alice Munro story live and breathe. Passions hopelessly conceived, affections betrayed, marriages made and broken: the joys, fears, loves and awakenings of women echo throughout these twelve unforgettable stories, laying bare the unexceptional and yet inescapable pain of human contact.