"Bobbie Ann Mason burst onto the American literary scene during a renaissance of short fiction that Raymond Carver called a 'literary phenomenon.' Anne Tyler hailed Mason as 'a full-fledged master of the short story.' Mason's work, charged with a spirit of exploration, garnered both popular and critical acclaim. This reader collects outstanding examples of Mason's award-winning work from throughout her writing career and provides a unique look at the development of one of the country's finest writers. Patchwork contains short stories first published in the New Yorker and other leading periodicals; chapters from Mason's acclaimed novels, including In Country, An Atomic Romance, and The Girl in the Blue Beret; and riveting excerpts from Mason's eclectic nonfiction. Some examples of Mason's recent explorations in flash fiction appear here in print for the first time. Mason's writing glows with a nuanced understanding of the struggles and pathos of American life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. George Saunders writes in his introduction, "Bobbie Ann Mason is a strange and beautiful writer. . . . Her stories exist to gently touch on, and praise, even mourn, what it feels like to be alive in this moment." Patchwork conveys Mason's extraordinary talent and range as a writer"--