Tourist season
stories
In Tourist Season, award-winning author Enid Shomer offers ten brilliant, richly detailed unforgettable stories of resilient women, aged seventeen to seventy, each at a pivotal point in her life. Their journeys cross distances of place and mind: A middle-aged Floridian who learns that she is the reincarnation of a Buddhist saint takes daring steps on her path to enlightenment; a long-buried secret forces one woman to leave the daughter she deeply loves; a Radcliffe student faces shocking family truths and taboos during the summer of 1966; an unexpected kinship forms between two women who land in a county jail after an excursion to Las Vegas. These travelers wander through shifting emotional landscapes of love, sex, and relationships, and often miss the destinations they'd wished to reach--of insight, connection, and understanding. Whether journeying to new geographical locales or exploring uncharted personal terrain, Tourist Season offers a provocative, engaging, and often humorous road map of the heart and soul."[When reading Enid Shomer's stories,] the thing one quickly senses is the will and the voice, someone saying, in effect, 'Relax, be comfortable, I'm going to take good care of you.' These are very fine stories."--James Salter, in Imaginary Men"Beautifully made, surprising and inevitable, wonderfully inventive and deeply true, these stories are full of small, irreverent, straight-faced miracles. They will lead women of all ages to suspect that the best may be yet to come."--Pam Houston, author of Cowboys Are My Weakness and Sight HoundFrom the Trade Paperback edition.
Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.
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What the reading experience may hold
A fuller profile for choosing with more confidence—not just another copy of the preview.
Fiction
Use these as starting points rather than limits; the most memorable books often stretch beyond their catalog labels.
Catalog signals suggest warfare and conflict, sexual material. These notes may not be complete; consult a publisher or reader-supplied guide when detailed warnings matter.
These notes are inferred from available catalog information and may not be complete. Check a publisher or reader-supplied guide if you need comprehensive warnings.
Dark tone · Steady pace
A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.
A good fit if…
Readers who want a thoughtful experience and enjoy noticing the connections beneath a book’s surface story.
This book's DNA
A visual estimate based on this edition's categories, description, and length. Select a star to explore the signals.
This signal is descriptive, not a rating. It helps compare the kind of reading experience this edition may offer.
Spoiler-Free Emotional Arc
A broad estimate of the book’s emotional rhythm, shown without story events or outcomes.
This visualization is an interpretive estimate based on catalog description, categories, tone, pace, and content signals. It does not describe specific scenes.
A quick reading snapshot
Edition facts and catalog signals to help you decide whether this book fits what you want to read next.
- ISBN-13
- 978-0-3454-9442-9
- Language
- English
- Edition record
- OL23077504M
A more thoughtful way into this book
This guide uses the edition details and category signals above to help you choose deliberately. It does not replace the author's work or a full review.
A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.
Begin with its place in Fiction, then notice where the book resists that label.
Read for connection, not completion.
Mark one passage that sharpens the book's central concern and one that complicates it. That tension often reveals more than a quick summary.
Three questions to carry with you
- What does the central character want, and what do they misunderstand about that desire?
- Which detail or relationship changes how you interpret the story?
- What feeling or question does the book leave with you after the plot moves on?
Editorial framework by Wesley Bryan, BookenDeX Founder and Editor.
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