Haslam explores the rural areas and small towns of his native region--California's Great Central Valley--in this collection of twenty-five short stories. The stories are filled with a principally masculine cast that is as culturally diverse as the West gets: a Chinese laborer, a Portugese farmer, a Vietnamese schoolboy, a black cowboy, and an Armenian poet, just to name a few. These pieces range from traditional stories to vignettes to sketches and talks as Haslam seeks literary structures that powerfully project his characters and their experiences. The author's triumph in these stories is that, by making us care about his characters and their habitats, he allows us to care more about ourselves and our land.