Winner of the 2009 Bakeless Fiction Prize, a confident debut collection from Belle Boggs about life on and around the Mattaponi Indian Reservation

Set on the Mattaponi Indian Reservation and in its surrounding counties, the stories in this linked collection detail the lives of rural men and women with stark realism and plainspoken humor. A young military couple faces a future shadowed by injury and untold secrets. A dying alcoholic attempts to reconcile with his estranged children. And an elderly woman's nurse weathers life with her irascible charge by making payments on a decrepit houseboat―the Mattaponi Queen. The land is parceled into lots, work opportunities are few, and the remaining inhabitants must choose between desire and necessity as they navigate the murky stream of possession, love, and everything in between.

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Belle Boggs is the author of The Gulf, a novel; the nonfiction book The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine and Motherhood; and the story collection Mattaponi Queen. She has published work in Ecotone, Orion, Ploughshares, and Harper's, among other publications. She grew up in King William County, Virginia and is Associate Professor of English at North Carolina State University.