Birds of a lesser paradise, by Megan Mayhew Bergman

Following legendary short story writer Alice Munro should have been pretty hard, but this first collection of stories by Megan Bergman is a hopeful sign – a young writer who may develop into someone like the 82 year old Munro.  These stories, most of which mix the human and the animal worlds in some way, are haunting.  In Saving Face a woman vet, whose formerly beauty has been marred when a wolf-dog unexpectedly woke from anesthetic and bit her mouth while she was removing porcupine quills from its muzzle, is called to a low security prison where the inmates raise farm animals.  She is to evaluate the animal stock to see what can be sold as the farm is shut down.  A caretaker inmate assigned to show her around turns on her when she refuses to spare a deformed calf he has been hiding and hand-raising.  The story in heartbreaking in so many ways.  Highly recommended.  222 pp.