The Painter’s Wife and Other Stories is a novella and a collection of short fiction focusing on the lives of women and men in the contemporary Western United States. In their exploration of Western life, the novella and short stories subvert the popular mythology of the West. The novella and stories are set in one of three Colorado settings: the city of Denver, the rural Western slope, and the mountain communities of the Western Slope. Beyond being linked by region, the stories are also loosely linked by characters. Characters from one story are mentioned or make brief appearances in others, reinforcing the idea of a people connected by community and landscape.