More on: Ingrid Hill

THERE WAS about him always, my great-great-grandmother Mathilde had written, a cloud of strange fragrance. She ticked off its elements in a diary entry made in the summer of 1885: sassafras grass, wool, raw leather, and a quick-sublimating sweat dense with some Hunkpapa condiment. In a different entry she added in the scents of the…

Gina Ochsner is the author of the short story collections The Necessary Grace to Fall (Georgia) and People I Wanted to Be (Mariner), as well as a novel, The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight (Portobello/Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt). Her awards include the Flannery O’Connor Award, Oregon Book Award, Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, and fellowships from the National…