A debut collection of 11 stories--slender, understated, sometimes anorexic--deals with the conflicts experienced by southern black people. Of mixed class and education, they're characters who share an ability to find humor in a variety of trying situations.

John Holman is the author of the story collections, Squabble and Other Stories, and Triangle Ray, as well as Luminous Mysteries, a novel. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Oxford American, Mississippi Review, Fiction, Terminus, and other journals. He graduated from North Carolina Central University with an M.A. and from the University of Southern Mississippi with a Ph.D. He is a professor of English and Creative Writing at Georgia State University at Atlanta and lives in Decatur, GA.