A winner of the 1992 National Magazine Award for Fiction whose work has also been anthologized in the O. Henry Awards series, W. D. Wetherell crafts in these nine stories dead-true dialogue, compelling situations, and powerful metaphors. The result is lightning-bolt revelations about the human condition.

A young boy sees in his father's expression the reality of failed dreams and schemes: "He looked at me like a man who wants his son to buy his illusions and see through them and forgive him for having them in the first place." A teen-aged daughter blazes the way for her father to the necessary blending of hope and grief as the two mourn the loss of wife and mother.

A blizzard engulfs a Montana home and the boy Willem senses a wider apocalypse. "The crust of the earth, the thing he took for granted most, was unwilling to support him, leaving him to flounder in a vague, sticky ether he couldn't trust." An aging, wheelchair-confined veteran faces an old nemesis and for a second time makes a life-or-death decision.

A seasoned, if failed, promoter thinks he's found in a spelling bee prodigy a success "emerald colored and plenteous and much richer than anyone had ever told him." With searing honestly and wry humor, Wetherell, a master of many voices and many moods, one of America's great short story writers, digs deep to find "that great heart" that beats beneath the surface of human experience.