High Price of Everything

This stunning debut reveals the disparate worlds of Africa and Georgia in eight understated and luminous stories that speak to the heart of human experience. Focusing on domestic scenesa marital quarrel; the death of a child; a shopping expeditionCoskran evokes the tragedies of everyday life. In the powerful ""An African River,'' a white woman traveling to Africa with her black husband is forced to confront their different expectations: ``I'd come to Ethiopia to be entertained; he'd come because . . .Africa was home.'' Africa is almost a living presence in this story, embodied in a seductive stream that has deadly undercurrents. In ``Disturbances of the Heart,'' a woman abandoned by her husband remains in Kenya, afraid of the locals and consumed by rage and loneliness until she helps a man she fears deal with a death in his family. Although many of these tales portray alienation and grief, they are rendered with compassion, and their message is ultimately reassuring; through human contact and the breaking of social barriers, the characters transcend their personal misfortunes, understand and forgive. (April)