The hot climate of promises and grace

the long version

"In his numerous years of worldly travels, a writer came to know many women. To him they told countless personal stories, revealing their wit and their work. Strange mix as their stories were, it became clear to the writer that he must chronicle these untold stories and bring them forth so that others may learn of these remarkable women as well. Stories of the plain and the transcendental; the practical and the miraculous; the hidden and the influential-these women who have conjured a way to love, and to give, so as to illuminate and transform the lives around them. From widely anthologized poet, novelist, and essayist Steven Nightingale comes The Hot Climate of Promises and Grace: 64 Stories-a collection of short stories that fluently speak to one another forming a spectacularly diverse, humorous, and interrelated body of work. These are stories of women rising to power. They are at work in the world-and within the world, as well. Women of curious knowledge, natural grace, rough sensuality, and mischievous instincts-they are remaking the world. Their labor is conscious, uncanny, fierce, strange, and has often been kept secret because it was their secret to keep"--