While he remains faithful to his wife the girl runs off with the local minister’s son. The officer meets a teen-age girl from a strict religious family whom he escorts home from her job as a screen projectionist. “Leaving Maverly” is an endearing, sad tale about a police officer and his terminally ill wife. “Pride” features a protagonist with a physical deformity who leads a cloistered life as an accountant until Oneida, a childhood friend, whose wealthy family loses its dignity after the patriarch steals bank funds for a doomed scheme, breaks through his emotional cocoon. “Haven” explores the fault line between domestic bliss and a sheltered wife’s desire to connect with people outside of her marriage to a rigid, conservative doctor. In “To Reach Japan,” a fledgling poet whose engineer-husband is on a long-term assignment finds herself on a train from western Canada to Toronto (with her young daughter in tow) toward a hoped-for affair with a journalist. The conclusion is both satisfying and morally fuzzy. Early on, the man tells her they are being blackmailed. The lessons learned from these tales are often ambiguous, as is the case in “Corrie.” A rich young woman with a bad leg seduces a married man and carries on a long affair with him. One of the pre-eminent short story writers of our time, Munro’s latest collection, “Dear Life,” published in 2012, features long journeys (both physical and emotional), lost desires, restlessness, sibling rivalries, dreams unfulfilled, and unrequited love. Munro’s short stories have always strived for more. That’s high praise, given the short story form’s challenge is to capture broader truths in the context of a scene or two. Critics have said of Alice Munro’s short stories that they have the sweep of a novel told in much fewer words.

To reach japan alice munro