"These three novellas are three gems, each with distinctive coloring and distinctive authorial voice. The winter atmosphere of the artists' colony in the title novella is captured in its unique mixture of aggressive companionship and loneliness, and frames an unusual love story played against a critical view of a marriage of two incompatibles. The highlight of this book, however, is the novella 'Hope Among Men.' . Herman's is a subtle, generous, humorous and touching triptych on the theme of love, oh, love, oh careless love.".