Talismans: Stories

Sybil Baker’s TALISMANS is a contemporary Heart of Darkness. In its linked stories, Baker’s compelling protagonist, Elise, travels throughout Asia in search of a way to come to terms with the deaths of her first love, her mother, and, especially, her father, a Vietnam vet who drowned in Thailand, where he lived with his second wife and family after abandoning Elise when she was a child. Although it is a harrowing journey, one in which she endures the loss of a lover, an opium habit, and the...