Horse Thief is an exciting debut collection of stories by a writer who has published widely in independent magazines and has built up a loyal audience through her readings and poetry chapbooks. Here is a truly trans-Atlantic multi-cultural book with stories located in London and the Pacific Northwest, tales about Roma Gypsy, Native Americans, Iranians and other -immigrants-working-class people struggling to find their way in urban society. Anna Balint embraces diversity of character and viewpoint and gives us a wide range of voices in skillfully woven tales laced with courage and humor.

We encounter such people as two young women selling central heating door to door in London, an Iranian immigrant selling used cars in Berkeley and a young Native American girl in a foster home visiting with her birth mother. In each case, the situation breaks open into something more than the purely personal, into something moral or political. Eight of the 13 stories feature the same protagonists-Maria, Ruthie and Annie-at different points in their lives, and explore the ways in which girls and women grow into themselves, sometimes nurturing others as well as themselves, sometimes not being able to, or allowed to, nurture themselves at all. Characters in other stories intersect with one of these three in either direct or subtle ways. From either side of the Atlantic, Horse Thief is about being alive and developing survival skills in the face of adversity.