The stories in are about people fighting to gain or hold onto some good. For the six-year-old heroine of it is innocence, threatened by her kidnapper. Gilda, the young English teacher of disappointed in love, wants a baby by artificial insemination. Middleton, the bumbling and incorrigible romantic of seeks love in Italy. In Isabel Larkin, lost in La-La land, seems uncertain about her identity--but not about doing what is right. Jeff Franklin, in tries mightily to convey his respect and liking for a distrustful young black boy he meets at the ballpark. These and others--a handsome alcoholic, a sex-obsessed homeless man, an ambitious cop, a professor drawn toward violence, a guilt-ridden man with a snuff movie--all struggle to possess a small part of what they have lost, thrown away, or never had.