(Not since Raymond Carver has the soul of the American family been plumbed as eloquently or as poignantly. The hungers of love and the fear of time drive the men and women, sons and daughters in these stories to speak. Frederick Busch renders precisely the need to connect and shows us the ways--funny, tender, and heartbreaking--in which connections, in spite of love, often fail. In "Heads" a mother is haunted by her own past when her daughter faces an accusation that could send her to jail. In "Malvasia" a daughter gives her bereaved father the courage to go on living. A father suffers over his inability to save his grown son from heartbreak in "Passengers." "The Joy of Cooking" is a brilliant portrait of a failed marriage. Called a "first-rate American storyteller" and "master craftsman" by the New York Times Book Review, Busch brings us into the achingly familiar lives of people caught between the need to tell a story and the fear of speaking out.

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