Fireweed

Annick Smith is a freelance writer, editor, and filmmaker. Her story, "It's Come to This," appeared in Best American Short Stories, 1992. She was coeditor, with William Kittredge, of The Last Best Place: A Montana Anthology. Her film credits include Heartland (executive producer) and A River Runs Through It (coproducer).

"The background, the history of the lumber industry and the Depression which deals it what looks like a death blow, is closely and adroitly woven into the warm and human fabric of the narrative."—New York Times "Simple and natural prose combines with local color that is not 'worked up' to produce a narrative of clarity and agreeable smoothness such as many veterans of fiction never attain, yet this excellence is not the chance by-product of mere naivete. The characters are fully rounded, thought out from the depths of actual experience, and the incidents of a disarmingly unpretentious story, not without some pleasing passages of sentiment, are carefully chosen for the light they shed on these people."—Saturday Review of Literature "The words and the sentences fall in place with ease and naturalness and inevitability."—Nation "Sure and vivid. . . . It adds another distinctive picture to the gallery of regional America."—Books