In these stories, limbo can be seen as both a sense of place, and a sense of being. Tuck’s characters are often traveling far from home, or find themselves out of place even at home; often her characters are women in the middle of second marriages, or between marriages, or women who are in relationships with men in which their sense of self is somehow on hold. And it is these elements of pain and confusion that bring the women back to themselves in precisely the way they need to be; to the sometimes heartbreaking but fully optimistic realization that the answers they seek are located not in other people, or places, but rather within themselves.

Rendered with grace and artfulness, Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived is a powerful and evocative work.