Two novellas provide insight into the human condition as a sixty-year-old art history academic embarks on an unexpected journey of discovery and a young farm boy is drawn to the water of Lake Michigan as an escape.

Minnesota, 1909. When Signe, her husband, Rune, and their three boys arrive from Norway to help a relative clear his land of lumber, they dream of owning their own farm and building a life in the New World. But Uncle Einar and Aunt Gird are hard, demanding people, and Signe and her family soon find themselves worked nearly to the bone in order to repay the cost of their voyage. At this rate, they will never have land or a life of their own. Signe...

A posthumous double volume of the influential author's first and last written works, published to coincide with the 90th anniversary of his birth, includes the bitter satire "Basic training" and the unfinished final novel "If God were alive today".

Three teenaged girls from very different backgrounds, thrown together to pick peaches in a Georgia orchard, spend a summer in pursuit of the right boy, the truest of friends, and the perfect peach.