Author Thomas Glave is known for his stylistic brio and courageous explorations into the heavily mined territories of race and sexuality. This searing collection of stories is a stunning debut of a writer theVillage Voice has named "One to Watch." "Thomas Glave walks the path of such greats in American literature as Richard Wright and James Baldwin while forging new ground of his own. His voice is strong and his technique dazzling as he cuts to the bone of what it means to be black in America, white in America, gay in America, and human in the world at large. These stories span the globe of the human experience and the human heart. They are brutal in some places, tender in others, but always honestly told. A true talent of the 21st century." -- Gloria Naylor "Thomas Glave has a strong talent and courage to take up the right to enter the inner selves of both black and white characters in his stories. This is a creative claim beyond 'authenticity' determined by skin color. He also has that essential writer's ear for the way different people speak within their cultures, and what their idiom gives away of their inhibitions and affirmations." --Nadine Gordimer "What a writer! What a book! Glave is a brilliant writer of startlingly fresh prose . . . His stories are intricate tapestries of life rendered through a triumphant act of the imagination." --Clarence Major "Remarkable stories by a gifted writer who explores the stresses, the split-minds, the implicit grandeurs, the subtleties, and the terrors of emotional desire and obsession." --Wilson Harris "[Glave's] rare insight, boundless courage, and fierce imagination make these stories resound long after you turn the last page." --Village Voice Thomas Glave is the author ofWhose Song? and Other Stories, the essay collectionWords to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent (winner of a 2005 Lambda Literary Award), and is editor of the anthology Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles (winner of a 2008 Lambda Literary Award).