Explore what links ghost stories, coming-of-age, fantasies, very real family relationships and rhyming rain together in this unique collection of short stories and poetry. Readers visit the seventies, when AIDS took so many of our best, travel further back to the sixties when innocence rode high in '57 Chevys, reverse forward to a very recent tug-of-war between austerity and true poverty and arrive even more recently to step into a café in the deep South when one diner is black, the other white. The short stories range from hilarious - a middle-aged set of friends find themselves barefoot in the pitch-dark Crater Lake national park - to tragic, as shelter workers confront unimaginable abuse. Prepare to be entertained by tiny Texan make-believe people baking on an apple pie and inspired by a poem lamenting the very real loss of a family home. Perry writes simply and convincingly. The sliver of connection between the wholes that a Venn diagram represents is clearly the same connection between all human beings, and this collection brings that reality home.
