These eclectic short works of fiction should be read as lyric essays of the human condition-comparable in intensity and emotion to lyric poetry-created out of the human spirit and brought to life by the experiences and imagination of the writer. Each story is a vignette of the human heart in conflict with itself as it struggles to resolve those human dilemmas that confront, confound and confuse us in making the choices that determine how we live our lives. The more troubling and controversial the questions, the more relevant and compelling-and important-the story. These are emotionally charged stories about things that matter-love and honor and pity and pride and compassion-that speak truth to life's mysteries and perplexities, the only kind of stories worth writing or reading. Includes Readers Guide.

Thomas Grissom is Emeritus Member of the Faculty at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, where for twenty-two years he taught across a broad range of curricula including Great Books, literature, philosophy, physics and mathematics. Prior to that he was a research physicist and Department Manager at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he had responsibility for the design and development of nuclear weapon components. He resigned his post in 1985 as a matter of conscience, a decision chronicled in three separate accounts: Studs Terkel, The Great Divide, Pantheon Press; Debra Rosenthal, At the Heart of the Bomb, Addison Wesley; and Melissa Everett, Breaking Ranks, New Society Publishers. He is also the author of The Physicist's World, Johns Hopkins University Press; four collections of poems: Other Truths, One Spring More, Journal Entries and Neither Here Nor There; a treatise on archery, Principles of Traditional Archery; a novel, Parodies of the Fall, and the collection At the Top of the World and Other Stories, all published by Sunstone Press.