The title story of Tania Hershman's debut collection The White Road and Other Stories is narrated by Mags, a grieving mother and owner of a roadside diner located on the 1600-kilometer road leading across Antartica to the South Pole. Living amongst the ice and snow, with only her dog and her customers to keep her company, Mags spends her days serving travelers breakfast and coffee while slowly preparing herself for a drastic sacrifice, the only way she can think of to escape the family tragedy that's chased her to Antarctica:

I stand in front of the toaster and I close my eyes. I reach with my left hand and feel about on the counter top until I find the bread bag. I grab it and take out two slices with my right, put the bag down, trying to picture in my head where it is, and feel over to the toaster. Toast goes in first time! It's because I've been practicing. For about two months practicing with my eyes closed, a little every day. Now I can do it. I know where everything is.

Many of Hershman's stories are similarly concept-driven, extrapolating their plots from the details of scientific articles, shared here as two or three line epigraphs that introduce many of her stories. There are stories here about the race to put a private space shuttle into orbit ("Space Fright"), understanding randomness ("On A Roll"), and even sunspots. Each of these stories use the scientific facts or theories to organize their characters' lives, or to give them a philosophy through which to see the world, a tactic which works well from story to story.  Luckily, most of these stories go far beyond their original conceits by offering characters well worth reading for, regardless of the surface level ideas that inspired them. "The Incredible Exploding Victor" is narrated by a boy whose best friend is being force-fed by his mother until he fears he will burst, offering a complex pair of co-dependencies that turn both sad and hilarious, while the excellent "My Name is Henry" delivers a series of entries so compelling and mysterious on their own that I was almost let down to see the scientific epigraph at the end, offering me the author's interpretation of the story's complex and compelling events.

The White Road's longest story is a mere twelve pages, and very few of the twenty-seven stories included here run more than five pages. In some ways, it's too bad, because it's in the longer stories that Hershman's very fine gifts as a storyteller are most obvious. There are certainly exceptions to this observation--one of the strongest stories in the collection is the two-page "Exchange Rate," about a woman only a few pounds of flesh away from what she wants most--but too often the shorter pieces felt like they lacked the length to consistently rise about the admitted cleverness of their concepts.

Luckily, when Hershman delivers, she really delivers. The two stories that bookend the collection--the aforementioned title story and the spectacular, fable-like "North Cold"--are particularly strong, filling a variety of roles by representing both the north and south pole as well as a move from the individual tragedy of the opener to the communally perceived triumph of the closer.  "North Cold" is one of the collection's best, showing a fondness for the fairy tale that seems to mirror Hershman's fascination with the more outlandish and popularly interesting aspects of modern science.

Overall, The White Road is a very fine collection, containing enough wonder and humor and heartbreak to overflow its slim pages, forcing the reader to share in the great emotion contained within. Hershman's talent is obvious, and I look forward to seeing it continue to grow across whatever new stories and new books might follow this excellent start.