From Sketch of a Bird in Flight, the poignant story of a lonesome gunslinger's run from the law and the work of art which brings a ray of beauty into his tragic life, to Bride, Groom, Sunday, Forever, an account of a couple's unusual and desperately honest on-stage wedding ceremony, this volume spans every corner of the imagination, presenting both novellas and short stories from a variety of genres. Adelaine depicts a reluctant spy whose sympathies for a fragile young woman endanger the simplest of missions, while An Oral History of Hell explores the afterworld through the eyes of a man intent on a redemptive journey out of that wintry, desolate land. Decibels is a tale of suspense pitting a deaf criminal against his captive in a strange game of deception where the power of sound takes on life and death consequences. Finally, in The Curtain and the Earth, an American engineer witnesses the Stath-Khellian Fissure, a genocide whose horrors drive him to an alternate reality in which the hand of God itself intervenes in humanity's self-immolation. In all of these tales, the male heart tries above all things to grasp some shred of truth, some sort of hope, from the enduring chaos of life's long journey.
