"In his beautifully achieved collection... Wendell Mayo explores the hard truths of the post-Iron Curtain era. Through the person of Paul Rood, who takes his enthusiasm for Walt Whitman to a country that has known only the depredations of Nazi and Soviet tyranny for half a century, the reader enters in to the recognition of what tyranny, with its attendant corruption, economic exploitation, and cynicism do to the human spirit... It is a book of great humanity and splendid prose." -- Gladys Swan