Foreigners — Stephen Finucan

In this absorbing collection of stories, Stephen Finucan depicts people struggling with the afflictions of life-marital breakdown, the illness of elderly parents, betrayals large and small-and with the solitude that encompasses them.

In "Casualties,"two brothers search for their grandfather's grave and the truth of his life, all the while unable to share the truth of their own. In the title story, a lonely widower, intent on quietly living out his days in the English countryside, receives a disturbing visit from a strange woman. And in "An Irish Holiday,"a couple attempts to escape the painful truth that lies at the heart of their failing relationship.

The stories take place in locales ranging from an Irish seaside village to small-town Ontario, from the war cemeteries punctuating the Belgian countryside to an impoverished island in the Caribbean. The settings, familiar and exotic alike, serve as mirrors of the characters' own displacement, reflecting not only their estrangement from others but also from themselves.