With a full range of narrative techniques, the fourteen stories in this volume explore the arcs people trace as they make their way in the world. Miles Wilson's compelling narrative presents characters at crucial moments in their trajectories, when the nature and outcome of their lives can be illuminated. Though built out of the texture of ordinary life, these stories concentrate their focus where the luminous intersects the commonplace.

Many of the stories are set in the American West, which often rises out of the background, virtually assuming the role of another character. In "Outsider," a fable of the artist and society is played out as a metaphysical western. "Wyoming" portrays a college professor, his career hanging by a thread, who meets an uncanny woman on a strange journey through a Wyoming blizzard. And in "Fire Season," a U.S. Forest Service firefighter undergoes an apocalyptic Santa Ana fire that takes him to the bewildering margins of the human and natural worlds.

Miles Wilson has worked for the U.S. Forest Service in Oregon and California and has been a partner in a small logging company. A member of the English faculty at Southwest Texas State University, he has published widely in such journals as the Georgia Review, the Iowa Review, the Sewanee Review, and Southwest Review.

"Frontier stories in the best sense: fresh, sharp, and rambunctious."—Gail Godwin