The theme uniting the characters in these stories is ambition--not in terms of extravagant goals, but the simple and basic wants for their lives and those close to them. These elementary concerns deal with love, death, fidelity, fleeting time, the desire to comprehend their journey, a reassessment of their lives, and others of more modest dimensions but no lesser importance. Sometimes they want the nominally impossible, as in the harrowing "Elsa," and at others the most mundane, as in the lighter "Kickbacks." Sometimes, as in "The Pharmacist," there is the shock of learning of the dichotomies...

The theme uniting the characters in these stories is ambition--not in terms of extravagant goals, but the simple and basic wants for their lives and those close to them. These elementary concerns deal with love, death, fidelity, fleeting time, the desire to comprehend their journey, a reassessment of their lives, and others of more modest dimensions but no lesser importance. Sometimes they want the nominally impossible, as in the harrowing "Elsa," and at others the most mundane, as in the lighter "Kickbacks." Sometimes, as in "The Pharmacist," there is the shock of learning of the dichotomies...