A single mother rents a fundamentalist preacher's carriage house. A pop star contemplates suicide in the hotel where Janis Joplin died. A philandering ex-pat doctor gets hooked on morphine while reeling from his wife's death. And in the title story, a train engineer, after running over a young girl on his tracks, grapples with the pervasive question--what propels a life toward such a disastrous end?
Rendered in a style both generous and intelligent, the men and women at the center of these subtle stories are driven by their unusual predicaments and preoccupations. Rife with dark humor,...
A single mother rents a fundamentalist preacher's carriage house. A pop star contemplates suicide in the hotel where Janis Joplin died. A philandering...
