Clifford Garstang, In an Uncharted Country . Winston-Salem: Press 53 (2009), 186 pp. I read the first story in this collection, “Flood, 1978,” over two years ago. I left a bookmark, and placed the book tepidly on a shelf awaiting a second go at the right time. And that time came a few days ago, after which I wolfed down the whole collection. “Flood, 1978” still didn’t do much for me upon revisiting it, but the second story, “Saving Melissa,” was strong enough to keep me reading the rest of the anthology. There are things I liked throughout the book. The dialogues were well executed, both credible and revealing. Some descriptions were right on the mark, such as this one, about a character who thinks about his dead mother: “She’d been gone so long. He tried to remember, but the image of her he conjured was distorted, as if through thick glass” (p. 177). The descriptions of nature (floods, snowstorms, woods, fields) are luscious and believable. The vignet