Ship Fever by Andrea Barrett

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Ship Fever (W.W. Norton, 1996), which won the National Book Award for fiction in 1996, is a collection of eight stories by Andrea Barrett. 

When I first picked up the book, I didn't realize that I'd already read the first story, "The Behavior of the Hawkweeds."  It was originally printed in The Missouri Review, and I'd read the reprint in Best American Short Stories, 1995 (guest edited by Jane Smiley).     

My favorite stories in the collection were "The Littoral Zone" (originally published in Story), "Birds with No Feet," and the rather stunning title story, "Ship Fever."  It, like several of the other stories in the collection, weaves together fiction and scientific or historical record.