Tobias Wolff's first two books proved how the short story can "provoke our amazed appreciation" (New York Times Book Review). Now after writing numerous other works, he returns to the short story with fresh revelations-about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother-that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary: a retired Marine enrolled in college while her son trains for Iraq, a lawyer taking a difficult deposition, an American in Rome indulging the Gypsy who's picked his pocket. In these ten stories, he once again proves himself, according to the Los Angeles Times, "a writer of the highest order: part storyteller, part philosopher, someone deeply engaged in asking hard questions that take a lifetime to resolve."