The twenty-five luminous and intensely personal essays in this collection are like Andre Dubus's celebrated short stories a testament to the author's vulnerability vision and indestructible faith. Since losing one leg and the use of the other in a 1986 accident Dubus has experienced despair learned acceptance and finally found joy in the sacramental magic of even the most quotidian tasks. Whether he is writing of the relationship with his father the rape of his beloved sister his Catholic faith the suicide of a gay naval officer his admiration for fellow writers like Hemingway and Mailer or the simple act of making sandwiches for his daughters' lunchboxes Dubus cuts straight to the heart of things. Here we have a master at the height of his powers an artist whose work "is suffused with grace bathed in a kind of spiritual glow" (The New York Times Book Review).
