THE LONG WHITE <i> by Sharon Dilworth (W .W. Norton: $7.95) </i>

Many of these short stories set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula focus on the conflicts between the Finns and the Indians, two groups who continue to misunderstand each other despite more than a century of living in proximity. The unhappy lives of Sharon Dilworth’s characters are shaped by the harsh winters and the continuing decline of the heavy industries that provided the economic base of the region. In the title story, a man who works the ore boats succumbs to his fears of unemployment and to the demon-haunted storms on Lake Huron, leaving his family to piece together a life that has been irrevocably shattered, like the ice on the lake at winter’s end. A moving account of blue-collar sorrows by a winner of the prestigious Iowa Short Fiction Award.