The 15 stories in this innovative collection interlock so smoothly that the book as a whole reads like a novel. They follow Mickey Fingerhut from when he is 14 years old in a small Pennsylvania coal mining town, through college, Vietnam, marriage, death of a young son, and divorce, to a search for meaning in the New Mexico desert. The award-winning writer (Book-of-the-Month Club Fellowship, Mississippi Review Prize) examines loneliness, desire, guilt, and a gamut of other human emotions in these stories, which are both accessible and often experimental. Reminiscent of Faulkner in their exploration of the human heart, these stories will also remind some readers of Richard Yates and Ernest Hemingway in the clarity of their art.
