Book excerpt: In this, his third collection of stories, Lester Goran moves us again through the times and places indelibly stamped with his wit and insight about people and events lost to history. Outlaws of the Purple Cow centers around the domains of Irish-American men and women in Pittsburgh. Goran creates once more his world of poignant and magical times and places within the mundane affairs of ordinary men and women. Goran's evocative settings and narratives range form the supernatural to the humorous, from bawdy to richly detailed realism. Goran, with his mastery of language and images, chronicles in stories the unheralded laughters and sorrows of Americans seldom noted in fiction. Goran creates once more his world of poignant and magical times and places within the mundane affairs of ordinary men and women. Goran's evocative settings and narratives range from the supernatural to the humorous, from bawdy to richly detailed realism: the bewildering ceremony enacted on a suburban lawn on Good Friday; an inventory of the loves of a lifetime compiled on scraps of paper and matchbook covers; the young man home on leave from the army who encounters a woman whose entire life is reflected in the wires holding together her threadbare Christmas tree; and the young man on the first day of his first job who delivers roses to a house where the homeowner had died since ordering the flowers. Goran, with his mastery of language and images, chronicles in stories the unheralded laughter's and sorrows of Americans seldom noted in fiction.