From a Nigerian boy's friendship with his family's former houseboy to a sweatshop girl's experience as a sister wife, from love and murder on the frontier to a meltdown in academe, these stories have the economy and power to "break hearts bones vanities and cages."

The acclaimed annual short fiction series - this year featuring guest editor Barbara Kingsolver - presents a collection of 2001 stories selected from magazines in the United States and Canada.

One Native Life is a look back down the road Richard Wagamese has traveled from childhood abuse to adult alcoholism in reclaiming his identity. It's about what he has learned as a human being, a man, and an Ojibway in his 52 years on Earth. Whether he's writing about playing baseball, running away with the circus, making bannock, or attending a sacred bundle ceremony, these are stories told in a healing spirit. Through them, Wagamese shows readers...

A giant quilt - the Quilt of Belonging-created for the Invitation Project, a collaborative community-based project celebrating the cultural diversity of Canada, with a square representing every immigrant group and 71 distinct Inuit and First Nations peoples. This is the story of the quilt and the quiltmakers.

"A collection of five spine-tingling short stories"--

A transcendent journey about growth and healing, ancestry and honoring ones roots and expatriation, and rising up to find a home within yourself.

Three strangers arrive one by one to a mysterious cabin in the middle of nowhere after enduring separate life-altering predicaments. Searching for a way out of the woods, frustrated, hungry and battling to stay warm, they discover their mysterious connection and realize what they have to do in order to get out of the woods alive.