A FEW SHORT NOTES ON TROPICAL BUTTERFLIES: Stories

The characters in this vibrant debut story collection—doctors, scientists and others drawn to precise order and logic—go to political and geographical extremes in search of a sense of purpose. A young American trauma surgeon in "Watson and the Shark" works for the Red Cross in a central African country. His craving for "life-or-death, all-or-nothing situations" is cruelly satisfied when he's shot by an armed rebel and his colleagues are forced to barter for their lives and abandon the people they went to the jungle to help. "The Hill Station" depicts a scientist in her immigrant parents' native Bombay seeking out the "real life" manifestation of the cholera bacteria she has spent her career studying in cool Atlanta laboratories. Overwhelmed by the horrors of the disease and the realization that an affair with a married colleague back home has left her pregnant, she flees the city and, on a bus headed to the tourist outpost of Mahabaleshwar, meets the man who will be a father to her unborn child. "The Carpenter Who Looked like a Boxer" is a beautifully restrained, vivid story about a gifted artisan trying to piece his life back together around the "great open wound" left by his wife's departure. Unlike many of Murray's characters, he doesn't try to run from his problems, but loses himself in his work and his two children instead. The only sign of strain is the strange, phantom burrowing sound that he hears in the walls of his house, a house he built for his wife. Murray's prose is strong and agile, rising to the drama of his scenarios without being overblown. His symbolism is occasionally too obvious, but this is a minor flaw; the affecting portraits make this collection emotionally resonant and enormously gratifying. (Mar.)

Forecast:Murray was anthologized in Best New American Voices 2002. An NPR campaign and six-city author tour should get the word out about this promising newcomer.