From a Farther Room

I first learned about Stephanie Vaughn's stories on a recent New Yorker fiction podcast, when Tobias Wolff read the story "Dog Heaven." Having Wolff vouch for a story should be enough--he's the best American short story writer working today, and his reading skills are almost as wonderful as his writing. And that Vaughn's story took place in the "Army brat" world where I grew up was even better. But what really drew me to this collection was the way Vaughn played with time and place in "Dog Heaven": the narrative moves around nimbly and subtly, switching almost effortlessly from past to present to future and back, and in and out of the narrator's head in very interesting ways. I had to read more.