"Encompassing a vast gamut of personalities, situations, and emotions, these stories penetrate our motives for doing what is right. Often there is no right or wrong, and the characters' motives for the choices they make are as diverse as the childhood memories they cherish and abhor. In the end, this book probes individual impulse and responsibility, creating stories so unerringly authentic that they become--irrepressibly--part of everyone who reads...

In the small college town of Hayden, Illinois, Morgan and Zhenya have settled into a loveless, stagnant marriage. The suicide of their son, Philip, ten years before has left the pair emotionally dead, lacking even the courage to separate from each other. Their surviving child, Emma, has become a teenage mother and refuses to reveal the identity of her child's father. Into this sullen mix marches Peter Ivanovich Kamenev, Zhenya's exasperating father....