Cover Page

Title Page

“Half in Love is an original mix of quiet calm and wrenching pain. Meloy’s gracefully confident, subtly emotional voice brings her locales vividly to life.”

—Susan Adams, Washington Post

“Memorable … In an era when story writers seem to be compelled to link their stories thematically into one tight package, Half in Love shows that sometimes alternating the flavor can improve the whole. … Like Pam Houston and Judy Blunt, Meloy has a uniquely female perspective on what life in the West is like for women. … She’s left a crisp, indelible picture of a place most readers will never have the privilege of visiting. With this promising debut she allows readers to live there for a little while.”

—John Freeman, San Francisco Chronicle

“Throughout these bite-size stories, Maile Meloy has a flair for making uncertainty vivid, for providing oblique answers in the form of startling enigmas, and for making the improbable seem palpably real.… Meloy’s voice is as unvarnished as her characters and as unadorned as a Montana hillside.”

—Mark Rozzo, Los Angeles Times

“Meloy writes with keen insight and compassion.”

—Sybil Downing, The Denver Post

“Meloy’s assured prose probes the minds of Montana ranch girls with astounding aplomb.”

—Gillian Flynn, Entertainment Weekly

“With her deceptively unfancy writing, Meloy excels at moments that make readers feel slightly sick with grief. Though her stories are sad, they’re not sentimental. She can even be quite funny, usually through her astute observations of character.”

—Polly Shulman, Newsday

“Beautifully written.”

—Harper’s Bazaar

“Glowing high-plains tales … The seduction is immediate.”

—Lisa Shea, Elle

“Maile Meloy writes with both fearlessness and true compassion, two talents that are rarely combined. In every story she creates a complex portrait of such disparate lives that by the end of the book I feel like I’ve seen the world. Half in Love is a vibrant, gorgeous collection.”

—Ann Patchett, author of
The Magician’s Assistant and Bel Canto

“The stories’ fit and polish are remarkable, they are right on the dime with cadence and timing. And Meloy is fearless in the sweep of her attentions, commanding the manners, idioms, and fundaments of a range of cultures, regions, and classes. Trust this audacious writer. She is a wonder.”

—Geoffrey Wolff, author of
The Duke of Deception and The Age of Consent

“Maile Meloy’s stories will make writers jealous and readers jubilant. Her knack for characters and situations as diverse as they are genuine is uncanny, unerring, and hugely exciting.”

—Myla Goldberg, author of Bee Season

“Maile Meloy is a true and rare find—a natural who consistently widens and extends the short story form to meet the demands of her uncommon intelligence and wit and sympathy. She possesses grace and subtlety, and with this first suite of stories, seems in fact to have arrived fully formed.”

—Richard Ford, author of
Independence Day and Rock Springs

HALF IN LOVE

  STORIES  

MAILE MELOY

For Nick Halpern