The Isle Of Youth: Stories

"Laura van den Berg writes risky stories about the secrets we keep from each other, and from ourselves. Her settings evoke mysterious yearnings. A woman trying to learn how her brother, a scientist, died at an isolated expedition site in Antarctica wishes she had shared with him the secret his first love told her years before when they all shared a house in Cambridge, Mass. Two sisters, whose father disappeared when they were teens, set up shop as private investigators in Florida, with disastrous results. Reading these strange, profound noirish stories is a timely reminder: When we act, there will be consequences."