In this impressive debut collection of short stories, we are taken to the heart of the places and times in which these tales are spun. From Sicily to New Mexico, Palestine, the Arctic, and the high seas, each story conjures with almost cinematographic intensity the dilemmas and dramas its characters must face. Knit from kernels of historical truth, these stories explode through fictional imagination that is passionately unwound in a narrative voice that is never less than gripping.