Galaxy Girls: Wonder Women: Stories

Sensitive, insightful and compelling are words used loosely by reviewers, but in the case of Pierce's stories, they are accurate descriptions for these 10 stories of women who have come to extraordinary turning points in their lives. Young Francie (``Sans Homme'') discovers love in the guise of her mother's cherished boyfriend. ``The broad shoulders and the blond-haired arms, the pack of Camels tucked under his rolled-up sleeve, made him handsome like a guy they'd haul off the range to smoke cigarettes in a TV ad.'' Karen (``Abeyance'') struggles with a disintegrating marriage and the looming specter of an empty nest. Native New Yorker Roxanne (``Empty Beauty Salon'') pulls up stakes and reopens her beauty salon in Morocco, Maine, ``mostly because she is a person without a need for importance or absoluteness, someone who doesn't necessarily have to be who she has always been before.'' The stuff of Galaxy Girls isn't earth-shaking high drama, but simply evocative storytelling, vividly and beautifully presented. (Sept.)