For All the Obvious Reasons is Lynn Stegner's superb collection of nine, remarkably distinct tales of passion, clear-eyed wisdom, and honesty honed to a cutting edge. These are stories the reader can't shake: A woman living a marital shadow-life realizes that her long compensating heart has begun to ominously decompensate. An affluent New Yorker becomes a hoarder to escape a future he cannot bear to take up. A baby dies in a miasma of sibling...