The short stories in this collection offer an intriguing gallery of characters—such as an actor trying to give up the vice of theater, a man who uncovers truths about his amorous grandmother, a widower who wrestles with the role of mothering as well as fathering, and a writer embarking on a quest to rediscover her ethnic roots. The stories are filled with dramaturgical scenarios and stageworthy monologues and dialogues and at every turn evoke the feeling of experiencing a visual artwork through her descriptive imagery. The author brings a poet's love of language and unexpected visions of human behavior to her fiction, resulting in tightly structured and densely layered compositions that are packed with striking images, plot twists, and tantalizing puzzles.