"In these nine peerless stories, a family boating trip veers into emotional disaster while very narrowly avoiding the physical; A would-be cheater hands over his car--his prized possession--for a shot with a pretty girl; A furniture magnate and his filmmaker daughter visit his impoverished hometown; A doctor's long-ago affair returns with a bitter pill. Crackling with wry humor, shot through with both wisdom and pain, these are stories of grifters and dreamers, of the lovelorn and the lawless, stories of the ongoing dissonance between the lives we want and the lives this world will allow." --