The stories in this collection are about women of all ages and circumstances. The runaway of the title story is a young woman who is incapable of leaving her husband. In another, a country girl emerging into the larger world via a job in a resort hotel discovers in a single moment of insight the limits and lies of passion. Three stories concern the same woman - in the first, she escapes from teaching at a girls' school into a wild love affair; in the second, she returns with her child to the home of her parents, whose marriage she finally begins to examine; and in the last, her vanished child turns up caught in the grip of a religious cult. In these and other stories Alice Munro's understanding of the people about whom she writes makes their lives as real as our own.

Alice Munro is the author of nine previous collections of stories and a novel, among them, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage; Friend of My Youth; and The Love of a Good Woman. Her awards include the W. H. Smith Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Munro and her husband divide their time between Clinton, Ontario, and Comox, British Columbia.