Book excerpt: This collection features short stories and two novel excerpts all dealing with flawed characters struggling to build and maintain meaningful connections with the people around them. Some of these characters fail while others succeed, although this success often takes a different form than the character anticipated. The stories take place in Mississippi and Tennessee and are infused with the troubled relationship with the past that so often marks literature set in the American south. While the individual pieces deal with a wide variety of situations and circumstances, the collection is united by a pervasive theme of loneliness, exploring the danger characters face in the potential loss of relationships, as well as the risks they are willing to take to maintain these connections.