<DIV>Jim Harrison's vivid, tender, and deeply felt fictions have won him acclaim as an American master of the novella. His latest highly acclaimed volume of novellas,<i>The Summer He Didn't Die,</i>is a sparkling and exuberant collection about love, the senses, and family, no matter how untraditional. In the title novella, "The Summer He Didn't Die," Brown Dog, a hapless Michigan Indian, is trying to parent his two stepchildren and take care of his family's health on meager resources ? it helps a bit that his charms are irresistible to the new dentist in town. "Republican Wives" is a wicked satire on the sexual neuroses of the right, the emptiness of a life lived for the status quo, and the irrational power of love that, when thwarted, can turn so easily into an urge to murder. And "Tracking" is a meditation on Harrison's fascination with place, telling his own familiar mythology through the places his life has seen and the intellectual loves he has known.<BR><BR>With wit as sharp and prose as lush as any Harrison has yet written,<i>The Summer He Didn't Die</i>is a resonant, warm, and joyful ode to our journey on this earth.<BR></div>