The Night Gardener: A Search for Home

Ranging from childhood reminiscences to her life after separating from her husband, Sandor, whose first collection of short stories (A Night of Music) won a Rona Jaffe Award for fiction, offers 20 finely observed and expressive personal essays. Of particular interest are the selections that deal with fly-fishing. While living in Florida with her husband and new baby, Sandor took up the hobby as an antidote to cabin fever. In ""Attitude Creek,"" she describes the peacefulness that, for her, comes from solitude in the wilderness. After Sandor observed a dozen Hasidic Jews watching her fish in the Colorado River, she was compelled, because of her own Jewish ancestry, to research the relationship between Jews and fishing. ""Waiting for a Miracle: A Jew Goes Fishing"" is an informed and gently funny rumination on this connection. Since Sandor details how she and her husband moved with their young daughter to Oregon in a search for an ideal home that would satisfy their mutual love of nature, it comes as something of a shock when she recounts how, after three years, she moved out; she states only that she fell in love with someone else, and her husband asked her to leave. ""Solomon's Blanket"" is a poignant account of how the shared custody arrangement to which she and her husband agreed could not prevent their six-year-old daughter from grieving over their breach. Although some of the pieces are more engrossing than others, this is a thoughtful collection by a talented writer. (Oct.)