A former star columnist down on his luck, a gaggle of misfits on a train going west across Wyoming in winter, a politician with some key decisions to make, a photographer who's always in need of money, a battered wife who isn't sure how to deal with her plight, a writer and university teacher whose foreign car breaks down in the middle of the American outback: These are some of the people who come alive in this collection of stories. All face points of no return. Unrelentingly stark, these stories will linger in the reader's mind.