A Bird of Passage, and Other Stories

In a small Swiss hotel, a young woman walks in out of the rain, cheerful, luggage-less, with nothing but her tuning hammer and her nerve. She is a piano tuner in an era when such work belonged exclusively to men, and she does it with a wit and confidence that both delights and disturbs the guests gathered in the salon. Through her encounters with an elderly lady and a curious gentleman named Oswald Everard, we glimpse a life lived on her own terms: imperfect, independent, and unapologetically unconventional. Written in 1894, these stories capture something rarer than plot: the quiet audacity of choosing yourself. The prose has the unhurried grace of a world before speed, letting small moments breathe. A girl tuning a piano becomes an act of defiance. A question about her past becomes an exercise in mystery. For readers who savor the delicate psychological portraiture of Henry James, the gentle feminism of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, or simply the pleasure of spending time with a character who refuses to explain herself, this collection offers an hour of quiet revelation.