{"product_id":"better-times-2","title":"Better Times","description":"\u003cdiv\u003eWinner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, the stories in \u003ci\u003eBetter Times\u003c\/i\u003e focus on what’s happening in places people don’t think to look. Women, sometimes displaced, often lonely, are at the heart of these stories. In \u003ci\u003eBetter Times\u003c\/i\u003e Sara Batkie focuses on the moments in women’s lives when the wider world is wrapped up in other matters: a father and daughter, separated by time and an ocean, dreaming of each other; a girl in a home for “troubled women” imagining the journey of the first dog in space; a phantom breast returning to haunt a woman after her mastectomy; a young woman giving birth to a litter of eggs. Such are the ordinary women weathering extraordinary circumstances in \u003ci\u003eBetter Times\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Divided into three sections covering the recent past, our current era, and the world to come, the stories gathered here—with characters stymied by loneliness, motherhood, illness, even cataclysmic climate change—interrogate the idea that so-called better times ever existed, particularly for women. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Sara Batkie","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43573284143286,"sku":"9781496211972","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0251\/4980\/0541\/files\/9781496211972_f8b530a4-85d7-4747-9b9e-df54f7ef8fa6.jpg?v=1726582206","url":"https:\/\/combined-academic.myshopify.com\/products\/better-times-2","provider":"Combined Academic Publishers - Mare Nostrum Group","version":"1.0","type":"link"}