Crossing the Border

Many of these short stories are connected by the reappearance of certain characters. Includes "The Scream," which follows a married woman named Renee who is supposed to meet her lover but stops at a museum instead, and is at once repulsed and captivated by a photo of an Indian woman holding a dead child, caught in mid-shriek. Subtle, intense, and thrumming with taut emotion, the story captures many themes that appear in Oates's work--self-definition, love, rebellion--but is atypically not violent.