From the violent world of apartheid South Africa to the supposed immigrant
haven of the United States, the people in Saunders's debut story collection
brave life's big questions about connection, displacement, death, love, race,
and justice. Grappling with feelings too disturbing to articulate, they turn to
anthropology or math, music or cosmology, to make sense of the
dissonance around them. More often than not, the only truth they find is that
life is a complicated dance and doing the right thing a moment-by-moment
decision.

     In "We'll Get to Now Later," a guilt-stricken white South African
immigrant confronts his apartheid past when he meets a Zulu dancer
traveling with a circus in the United States. In "Pig Day," an American
teenager accidentally kills his best friend Nick, the son of a Romanian
immigrant, and is co-opted by the bereaved father to build Nick's coffin. In
"A Sudden New City," Heila, a frail and mentally faltering white South
African grandmother, drives a tractor into a black crowd as revenge for her
husband's infidelity across the color line.

     In the tradition of Nadine Gordimer and Norman Rush, but with its own
sense of comedy and metaphor, Blessings on the Sheep Dog is a first work
by a master storyteller.


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In 1984 GERDA SAUNDERS emigrated to the United States from South
Africa, where she had worked as a research scientist and math and physics
teacher. Upon her arrival in this country, she began writing fiction. She
became a U.S. citizen in 1992, and in 1996 she received a Ph.D. in English
from the University of Utah. She now designs multi-media instructional
materials for computer- and Web-based training. She and her husband,
Peter, make their home in Salt Lake City. They have two children who
attend the University of Utah. She recently completed her first novel, The
Last Pietà of MichelAgniolo.

What people are saying about this book
"With cool intelligence, laconic wit, and deep feeling, Gerda Saunders 
explores the moral chaos of South Africa and the pain of a new generation 
of South African exiles."—J. M. Coetzee

"A splendidly innovative, entertaining, and sometimes ferocious prose
version of what life can be like in our time.—James McManus

"Haunting and intelligent stories. That rare combination of analytical
integrity and story in an intensely moral work. Saunders earns the
distinction, like Dostoevski, of being a 'soul doctor.'"—Janet Peery