"An exhilarating collection" (The New York Times Book Review) of ten blended stories from Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro "The rich texture of its narrative and the author's graceful style make [The Beggar Maid] a considerable accomplishment."--Joyce Carol Oates, Ms. In this vibrant series of interweaving stories, Alice Munro recreates the evolving bond--one that is both constricting and empowering--between two women in the course of almost forty years. One is Flo, practical, suspicious of other people's airs, at times dismayingly vulgar. The other is Rose, Flo's stepdaughter, a clumsy, shy girl who somehow--in spite of Flo's ridicule and ghastly warnings--leaves the small town she grew up in to achieve her own equivocal success in the larger world.