Is This the End of Little Rico?

Like Garrison Keillor's tales, Daniel Ort's essays always entertain and evoke laughter. This collection faithfully delivers a great helping of Ort, plus insights into solid family relationships.

The delightful "Loose Ends" recounts Ort's brother Bob's prodigious ability to spin a yarn. In fact, a few yarns, all intertwined and finally gathered by their loose ends into a method of getting back on track that is announced by the word "Anyway." This essay also patterns itself into the starting locus of Ort's own yarns that weave through the book: the differences between brothers, the search for a wartime hero, the unfaithfulness of memory, Bob's first pair of jeans (at age 70), and the awkward and whimsical steps one makes in the long dance with death. This is one of Ort's finest and most entertaining books.