Fiction. This collection of eleven short stories depicts poor, rural characters in upstate New York, struggling to maintain balance and personal stability amid family disintegration, random misfortune, and death. "These characters are distinguished," says novelist Paul Theroux, "by their powerful sense of place and most of all for the grim humor of their humanity." "Little more than stubbornness makes these people possible." writes Jonathan Penner, "yet in every story, nobility gleams through the muck. Ian MacMillan has chronicled a culture exotic to most of us through characters in whom we see precisely who we might have been." Ian MacMIllan is the author of a dozen previous books and the winner of many award including the PEN-USA West Award and the Hawai`i Award for Literature.