From the author of the highly acclaimed Four by Four and Among the
Hedges comes a collection of unsettling, captivating stories.
The eleven stories in this collection approach themes of childhood and
adolescence, guilt and redemption, power and freedom. There are children
who resist authority and experience the process of growing up with
shock, and loneliness; alienated young girls whose rebellion lies under
the surface--subterranean, furious and impotent; people who are
tormented--or not--by regret and doubt, addicted to feelings of
culpability; men who take advantage of women and adults who exercise
power over children with a disturbing degree of control; kids abandoned
by their parents; the suicide of the elderly and the young; lives that
hide crimes--both real and imagined. Eschewing cosmopolitanism in favor
of the micro-world of her characters, Mesa depicts a reality that is
messy and disturbing, on even the smallest scale of an individual life,
a single family.