Lucia Berlin was a short story writer with a small, devoted following during her lifetime. She rose to sudden literary fame eleven years after her death, in 2015, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux's publication of a volume of selected stories, A Manual For Cleaning Women, edited by Stephen Emerson. It hit the New York Times bestseller list and, within a few weeks, had outsold all her previous books combined.

Homesick (1990) and So Long (1993), her immensely popular short story collections, established Lucia Berlin as the Sister of Mercy of contemporary fiction. In Where I Live Now, Berlin once again contemplates the human condition with a compassionate understanding. Berlin's vision is sometimes remorseful, sometimes resigned, always courageous and unmisgiving.

The elusive nature of happiness is a compelling theme here: the survivors in these stories -- many of them society's marginal or excluded people, fighting alcohol or drug addiction, bearing emotional scars -- recognize it all too well. They mourn the lost dreams of youth, the roads not taken. They suffer the damage life inflicts: the ache of loneliness, the pain of separation, the fear of death.