<p><strong>Critically acclaimed writer Ellen Gilchrist, winner of the National Book Award, returns with her first story collection in eight years.</strong><br /><br />In <em>Acts of God,</em> master short story writer Ellen Gilchrist has crafted a collection that takes us into eleven scenarios in which people dealing with forces beyond their control somehow manage to survive, persevere, and even triumph.<br /><br />For Marie James, a teenager from Fayetteville, Arkansas, the future changes when she joins a group of friends in their effort to find survivors among the debris left when a tornado destroys a neighboring town. For Philipa, taking control of her own fate is the greatest act of courage she can imagine, and the most difficult. For Eli Naylor, left orphaned by a flood, there arrives the understanding that out of tragedy can come the greatest good. In one way or another, all of these people are survivors who find the strength to go on when confronted with their own mortality, and they come alive in these stories, told with clear-eyed optimism and a salty sense of humor.<br /><br />As a critic in the <em>Washington Post</em> wrote in reviewing an earlier work, “To say that Ellen Gilchrist can write is to say that Placido Domingo can sing. All you need to do is listen.”</p>