Mary Lavin: Selected Stories

Eleven of Mary Lavin’s short stories, originally selected for a 1964 collection in 2 volumes by Constable, with this Penguin edition arriving in 1981 when she was asked to choose just enough for one volume. She said she wanted to make the choice as representative as possible of her entire body of work, but knew this would be difficult. So she took one story from each of the eleven volumes of stories already published, and to simplify the choice further, she selected the title story in each case. One snag was that her first book of stories did not have a title story, so one of the storties was chosen at random. In the Middle of the Fields is one of her most highly regarded stories, and it is here, and the others include Lilacs,
The Long Ago, A Likely Story, Happiness, and The Shrine.