Bergman gets better with every book. This collection of short stories and one novella showcases her skill at creating characters in various stages of adversity. The women who take center stage in her fiction struggle against and in spite of the cards they are dealt. Each of these stories made me think deeply about the desire for meaning and fulfillment. Indigo Run, this collection's crowning achievement, takes place at an ancestral home near Charleston, South Carolina in the early 20th century. Everyone is in some way trapped by their circumstances. The main character thinks to herself, "Practice the art of polite conversation...and know that a woman can die of thirst beside the ocean."
— Stan HyndsAn evocative and engrossing collection of new stories and a novella about women experiencing life's challenges and beauty
A recently separated woman fills a huge terrarium with endangered flowers to establish a small world that only she can control in an attempt to heal her broken heart. A competitive swimmer negotiates over which days she will fulfill her wifely duties and which days she will keep for herself. A peach farmer wonders if her orchard will survive a drought. And generations of a family in South Carolina struggle with fidelity and their cruel past, some clinging to old ways and others painfully carving new paths.
In these haunting stories, Megan Mayhew Bergman portrays women who wrestle with problematic inheritances: a modern glass house on a treacherous California cliff, a water-starved ranch, and an abandoned plantation on a river near Charleston.
Bergman's provocative prose asks the questions: what are we leaving behind for our descendants to hold, and what price will they pay for our mistakes?