0Lucia Berlin is widely recognized as a master of the short story. This collection captures distilled moments of crisis or epiphany, placing the protagonists in moments of stress or personal strain, and all told in an almost offhand, matter-of-fact voice. Weaving through the places she loved--Chile, Mexico, the Southwest, and California--each story delivers a poignant moment that lingers in the mind, not resolved, not decoded, but resonating, as questions of the human condition always do, in the heart of the reader.