This collection of stories, many previously published in highly regarded literary magazines, deals, primarily, with the common experience of loss, be it love or some other form of human currency or value. What is uncommon, however, is how we are able to enter the hearts and minds of the men and women while they are grappling with their own extraordinary destinies.
The stories are set in contemporary, or near contemporary, Canada, although several of these stories are set, at least in part, in Japan, China, Vietnam, Western Europe and the United States.
You will meet a woman gangster from Shanghai, who wins a Vancouver lawyer in a high stakes game of Mah Jongg; a Wyoming fisherman who loses a pocket-knife, but discovers something of greater value; an American army sergeant from Brooklyn who refuses to shoot a looter; two sisters from Yokohama, and the very different choices they made; an Alberta sheriff and the stripper who invited him to dance; and others.