SOURCE: McGrath, Patrick. “A Trail of Bread Crumbs.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (20 March 1994): 3, 9.

In the following review, McGrath feels that Busch demonstrates skillful and powerful writing abilities in several stories in The Children in the Woods, but that many of the tales lack the in-depth characterization and plot structure for which Busch is known.

One of the strongest stories in Frederick Busch's new collection, The Children in the Woods, is “Berceuse,” and one of the strongest moments in “Berceuse” comes when an awful Jewish woman called Miriam tells her goy sister-in-law Kim that Kim's recent miscarriage occurred because of the Holocaust. “Oh yes,” she said, “Your baby died because you murdered us. Every one of you murdered our dead. Ask your priests. Ask your dead God. The fruit of your womb is death.”

Miriam is one of the few monsters in the book. But she is thematically...