Miles Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect. What keeps him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school. Or maybe it's Janine, Miles' soon-to-be ex-wife, who's taken up with a noxiously vain health-club proprietor. Or perhaps it's the imperious Francine Whiting, who owns everything in...

A collection of short fiction explores the lives of a variety of characters, including a jaded Hollywood filmmaker, a precocious fifth-grader watching his parents' marriage disintegrate, and a child forced into a harrowing cross-country escape.

"This outstanding anthology offers a rare glimpse behind the scenes of contemporary fiction and how it is made. Taking the reader backstage through original essays written especially for this volume, the writers reveal how their stories came into being: what inspired them, how they evolved through different drafts, how "real life" and fiction interest, and how the stories, in their final form, both fulfill and transcend their author's original designs."--Jacket....