A book of profound and candid stories by one of America's best novelists Temporary Shelter is a collection of twenty expertly crafted short stories by Mary Gordon. The characters here are of diverse ages, classes, and nationalities, yet all are alike in their desperate need of safe harbor. A crippled girl must contend not only with disability, but also with her toxic mother and aunts, who block her on the path to maturity. Elsewhere, a woman afflicted by a fearful anxiety that has given her a "death in life" grapples with how not to pass the same curse on to her daughter. As in Gordon's acclaimed novels, these stories dissect fraught relationships between men and women, from the shattering effects of divorce to marriages turned numb and cold. Skillfully and empathetically plumbing her characters' depths, Gordon yields rare catharsis with Temporary Shelter.