The City Beneath the Snow

In her posthumous book of short stories, Bellwether Prize-winner Cole (A Spell on the Water) pays homage to the strength and beauty of the people and landscape of her adopted home, Alaska%E2%80%94an entity formidable enough to seem a character in its own right, as it drives, confounds, and inspires its inhabitants. In "Aurora Borealis," Leslie Talus muses, "Here in Fairbanks, the weather was always in your face%E2%80%A6 the weather was in search of you." But rather than dreading that fierce cold, she becomes infatuated with the northern lights, climbing to the top of a hill to witness them every night. In "Fooling the Guesser," Molly, a young professor, "thought that sometime she would like to spend the night outside%E2%80%A6 She had not expected to find in Alaska something so tempting to the lonely heart. Something in this empty wilderness that would go to work on her like a lover%E2%80%A6" Cole's human characters are equally intriguing, and consistently lonesome. In "Highways," Eamon Castle, a 52-year-old with a grown daughter, a wife of 25 years, and a desire "to take reverent note of the world around him," signs up for an art class and unexpectedly connects with Frances, a young woman who has lost her husband and children in a terrible accident. Like Eamon in his quest to experience the beauty that surrounds him, readers will find plenty of it in Cole's City. (Feb.)