In this haunting new collection of stories from award-winning writer Hester Kaplan, the past has a way of showing up when it is least welcome. In the title story “Unravished,” a woman reconsiders her marriage to a man bent on destroying a world famous landscape. In “The School of Politics,” a bored museum director struggles to understand her youthful affair with a corrupt politician. The fastidious preservationist in “The Aerialist” makes an emergency appointment to see the dentist who gave him advice on love years before. When two prickly private school colleagues in “This Is Your Last Swim,” find they are the only people left on campus in the days before the world’s end, they urgently and uncharacteristically come clean with their old secrets and shames. Masterfully written and emotionally packed, these stories seduce and startle, and remind us of the shifting ways we choose to narrate our own lives.
