The Nature of Longing: Stories

In ``Off-Season Travel,'' one of the eight stories in this impressive debut collection, two lonely, unhappy couples-one white, one black-reach out to each other at a Mexican vacation resort, but the attempt at rapport founders amid misunderstandings, secrets and strained communication. Winner of the 1994 Flannery O'Connor Award for short fiction, Miller offers lyrical yet precisely observed stories featuring characters-black, white, gay, straight-who strive to connect to themselves and to others by transcending conventional barriers. In ``Summer in Detroit,'' a black junior high school track coach, visiting his senile white grandmother, relives the death of his son in the 1967 Detroit riots, a tragedy that led to his imprisonment for assaulting a cop who refused to call an ambulance. The reclusive black gay librarian who is outed in the title story draws strength from memories of a protective female cousin who nurtured his sense of self in childhood. ``Dead Women'' features an expatriate American teacher working as a governess in Madrid, who is torn by conflicting emotions over her Parisian ex-lover, a Haitian-Dominican law student. The black mother in ``Color Struck'' struggles to accept her newborn albino daughter. Miller brings psychological depth and a keen sense of moral ambiguity to these finely wrought tales. (Oct.)