In France, Mattie feels 20 again. In Poland, Magda revisits her impoverished family. In Uzbekistan, Diana lets a fellow tourist kiss her. In Germany, Lynn loses her luggage on the D?sseldorf train. The Hopeful Traveller is a collection of short stories about--and told by--single women who have put the past behind them but are still looking for their anchor in the present. It includes bitter-sweet accounts of the freedoms of postwar life, of foreign...