Shipwrecks, dive bars, possession, and science—this is where contemporary horrors and ancient terrors meet. In Fresh Dirt from the Grave , a hillside is “an emerald saddle teeming with evil and beauty.” It is this collision of harshness and tenderness that animates Giovanna Rivero’s short stories, where no degree of darkness (buried bodies, lost children, wild paroxysms of violence) can take away from the gentleness she shows all violated creatures. A mad aunt haunts her family, two Bolivian children are left on the outskirts of a Metis reservation outside Winnipeg, a widow teaches origami in ... continue