NEWS FROM THE VOLCANO

The five stories in Swan's fourth collection (Of Memory and Desire, 1989, etc.) stay with familiar yet satisfying material: hopelessly stifled lives adrift in the American Southwest.

In "Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn," the Lerner family—father Nathan, mother Reba, and daughter Rachel—have moved from their home in Delaware to a mining town in New Mexico to manage a furniture store. The town is "high in the mountains . . . up for grabs by mud and dust," and the promise of happiness and prosperity ends almost immediately when Nathan discovers that one of the store's long-time employees, Max Becker, is stealing from the business. Owner Sam Goldman, however, won't fire Max unless Nathan can prove the charge. By the time he can, Rachel has grown from an acquiescent girl to an inquisitive young woman. From local hairdresser Suzie Lightfoot she learns not only the facts of life but the additional fact that there's more to the world than this miserable little town. Swan explores the desire to escape in other pieces as well. In "Sloan's Daughter," middle-aged banker Tom Sloan is trapped between his daughter's reckless life and his powerful father's reputation. "News from the Volcano" examines a single long night in the life of a waitress named Lupe, deposited by fate at a little cafe in the desert. "The Chasm"—the only disappointment here—chronicles the slow, hard lives of the region's cattle ranchers. Finally, in "Backtracking," wanderer Jason Hummer is forced home to Salida, Colorado, when his mother dies and leaves him her small house.

Jason laments that "there is nothing so false or stupid as the idea of the second chance, the fresh start." Yet Swan keeps the men and women in her sensuous, bittersweet stories dreaming and reaching, in the very best traditions of American storytelling.