Where the Light Falls: Selected Stories

Rediscover the masterful stories of a midcentury artist whose multifaceted portraits of women were generations ahead of her time


“A stunning, crystalline collection.” —Vogue

Nancy Hale was considered one of the preeminent short story artists of her era, a prolific writer whose long association with The New Yorker rivaled that of her contemporary John Cheever. But few readers today will recognize her name. Acclaimed author Lauren Groff has selected twenty-five of Hale's best stories, presented here in the first career-spanning edition of this astonishingly gifted writer's work.

These stories seem ahead of their time in their depiction of women—complicated characters, sometimes fragile, possibly wicked, often remarkable in their apparent ordinariness, from an adolescent girl in Connecticut driven into delirium over her burgeoning sexuality in "Midsummer," to a twenty-something New Yorker experiencing culture shock during a visit to a friend's house in Virginia in "That Woman," to a New England widow in search of alcohol while babysitting her grandson in "Flotsam." Other stories touch on memories of childhood, the intense trauma of electroshock therapy, and the spectre of white supremacy. Haunting, vivid, and subversive in the best sense, Where the Light Falls is nothing less than a major literary rediscovery.