It's 1986, and the famine machinery is humming in Ethiopia. It's been two years since the greatest famine of the twentieth century has been uncovered with the deaths of half a million and counting. Clinic nurse Emma Smith, alone and rattled in the remote village of Godo, hears that a new nurse, Reece Myers, is coming and welcomes him with open arms. What begins as a working relationship under trying conditions buds into a likely romance, but Reece is engaged to a woman back home and soon finds himself at the wrong end of an AK-47, dashing Emma's hopes.

Oh, what a wonderful e-mail! Decline of the able-bodied greeter. Carefully hidden among the potatoes. Hot pear. Tooth strikes sink. My child is pretty. Is that your thatch? U.S.S. Pajama Bottom. Ectopic fantasy. Cat refuses to swallow hair, dies young. Save all Teds. The birthday party across the street functions without us, apparently without any weird or ill effects. Catheter stopped up. Talking pork rhizomes. The crazed pee. Errorotomy. Show daddy how you march. A springbok in every crockpot. Black and white people. Bug-eyed Jesus. The B&B’s green lawn piled high with...