FROM NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST PATRICIA HENLEY

In APPLE & PALM, a linked story collection set in and around the town of Whistle Pig in the Western Maryland mountains, a web of characters navigate unexpected pitfalls, relationships, and aging.

- Fragile, elderly Roxy now lives in a studio behind Tansy, the women’s arts co-op, instead of with the other women. She wants Lulu nearby. Lulu is her philandering grandson’s wife, a free spirited mother who keeps Roxy connected, alive.

- Jill is in her sixties. She’s resilient, a little fierce, and rescues others—lets them find peace working in her apple orchard or respite on her sprawling property, which gives her a love and connection she prizes far more than any romance.

- And then there’s Maddy, who loves books but has to read on the sly. She came up poor and married young, and her unreliable and violent husband doesn’t trust books. Or her.

Exploring faded dreams, newly found independence, memory, desire, and more, the women in Henley’s stories clarify their identities and grasp their own narratives, in a world where men are rarely soulmates but share the reckoning of change. Sentence by sentence, Patricia Henley demonstrates in APPLE & PALM why she is a master of the short story craft.