Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories

Tobias Wolff's first two books proved how the short story can "provoke our amazed appreciation" (New York Times Book Review). Now he returns with fresh revelations--about biding one's time, experiencing first love, or burying one's mother--that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary: a retired Marine enrolled in college while her son trains for Iraq, a lawyer taking a difficult deposition, an American in Rome indulging the Gypsy who's picked his pocket. In this potent new collection, the first in over a decade, Wolff displays his mastery over a quarter century, once again proving himself "a writer of the highest order: part storyteller, part philosopher, someone deeply engaged in asking hard questions that take a lifetime to resolve" (Los Angeles Times).