Quickening

"A deft, fleet, and luminous collection of stories. Liza Wieland has a gift for culling extraordinary prose from the ordinary human moment; ultimately we see that no human life is merely ordinary. It was a pleasure to read these stories, and to feel myself in the presence of somebody who can tell me, jaded reader as I am, some things I don't know about this world."â€"Cynthia Shearer, author of The Celestial Jukebox
From the opening story in Liza Wieland's third story collection, in which a literary translator reflects on her first marriage, to the last, a poetic evocation of a daughter's love for her mother, lyrical yet realistic portraits of women unfold. Caught in revealing and cathartic moments, her characters, both historical and invented, find themselves at emotional crossroads: a young girl encounters the elderly Ezra Pound in Venice; Marie Curie's daughter Eve attends the funeral of her mother's lover in Paris; a woman survives the 1944 Nazi massacre in Oradour, France; a nun in New York City catches a baby dropped out a window; a U.S. college applicant performs sign language at poetry readings.
"Liza Wieland writes of discord with such harmony and wisdom that even the bad things that befall her characters feel limned with wonder and grace. For all its wonderfully realized tensions and conflicts, Quickening is an oddly hopeful and redemptive book."â€"Michael Parker, author of Don't Make Me Stop Now