Russell’s plots are so strange that they border on absurdity. Vampires who’ve substituted lemons for blood navigate a tumultuous marriage. An indentured factory worker is transformed into a silkworm. Dead presidents inhabit the bodies of horses. Far from undercutting the stories’ sincerity, though, this strangeness in Russell’s hands somehow only serves to lay bare the deeply human feelings and experiences at the center of her stories. They feel all the more intimate, and all the more affecting, for being so bizarre.