The Forgetters

This sharp-witted collection from Sarris (How a Mountain Was Made) comprises stories told by “crow sisters” about the Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok homelands of northern California. Question Woman and Answer Woman, the twin granddaughters of trickster Coyote, live as crows. Their stories, loosely anchored in creation myths but also firmly grounded in place and time, are enigmatic and open-ended, and nearly always center people who have learned, to their peril, to ignore their connections to the land and each other. In the evocative “A Man Follows an Osprey,” a troubled man hopes an osprey will lead him to a legendary box of gold. The field worker heroine of the mysterious “A Woman Meets an Owl, a Rattlesnake, and a Hummingbird in Santa Rosa” finds her life forever changed when she’s drawn night after night to a camp where three shape-shifters tell stories by the light of the moon. In the poignant “A Woman Invents a Lover,” a gaggle of gossips watch as good-hearted Marlene falls in love, is abandoned, and must perform a series of fairy tale–like tasks to reconnect with her family and her past. These incandescent stories will linger in the reader’s imagination. (Apr.)