Eco-fiction is fiction in which real earth ecology is a major component of the plot such that it goes beyond just the setting. Virginia Arthur

A lovely yet wry collection of eco-fiction short stories, part sheer pleasure, part humor, part grief and pain, part relentless social/political commentary, calls for change.

The Stories

A Strangler Fig (Ficus macrophylla) Grows in Eden

When a self-absorbed aging woman is pitted against a sprawling fig tree, who wins?

It’s So Lovely to Live in the Country (A Constantly Repeating True Story)

It’s so lovely to live in the country, as long you don’t go outside.

All Forces Maligned (Driving Nora Home)

Short of a lightening bolt to Nora’s head, just about all that is left ‘from the universe’, can anything bring these two sisters together?

Di Voce Quae Loquebatur de Ligno Caudis (The Voice That Spoke From the Stumps)

The cutting down of beloved trees results in epiphany, the grasping for life, in this young man.

Doe

An abandoned doe, an abandoned daughter.

Restoration Ecology

Fairy slippers do not equal her fairy tale, but she knew this all along.

Lame Duck

When a child tells you of suffering, listen.

Free the Teacher, Free the Child

Why do we adhere to a 400 year old ‘model’ of education that forces our growing children, our teachers, into chairs all day? Don’t we love our boxes!

Bugged

Academia revealed—by a cloud?

Winter Girl

When comfort comes not from people, but from the earth.

About the title and cover: stem and leaf plots are a type of distribution table (similar to a histogram) used in statistics. The title and cover of the book are a play on this statistical method, pun intended.