In the unforgiving vortex of the American heartland, when you have to choose, you always choose life For Iona Moon, the open fields of the Kila Flats and the town of White Falls are centuries apart rather than the distance of a few miles. Mocked and feared by her classmates, Iona is only desirable to beautiful, brilliant Jay Tyler when they’re in the backseat of Willy Hamilton’s Chevy. Passion offers relief from the abuse of her older brothers and the sorrow of her mother’s slow surrender to cancer. But transient pleasures do not lead to grace—and Iona discovers she must escape everything she knows before she can learn to love the ones who have harmed her. Sensual, haunting, and tender, Iona Moon is a cry for independence, a demand for respect, and a realization that all worlds are cruel in their own ways.

This striking array of stories, essays, and poems reflects women’s experiences in the American West. Though the tales they tell reflect a variety of viewpoints, these writers share the struggle against the overwhelming isolation brought on by gender and the physical environment. Contributors include:Christina Adam, Gretel Ehrlich, Anita Endrezze, Tess Gallagher, Molly Gloss, Pam Houston, Teresa Jordan, Cyra McFadden, Deirdre McNamer, Melanie Rae Thon, Marilynne Robinson, Annick Smith, Terry Tempest Williams, and Claire Davis

Winner of a 1997 Whiting Writers' Award One of Granta's "Best Young American Novelists" Ranging across a uniquely American landscape, from rural Idaho and suburban Arizona to downtown Boston, the eleven stories in Melanie Rae Thon's eagerly awaited reissued collection, Girls in the Grass, explore with painful lyricism the harsh awakenings of adolescence: eroticism and hypocrisy, love and violence, responsibility and guilt, adult inconstancy and the random cruelty of life and death.