Real lives are full of dark instincts, lost last chances, chaotic half- reconciliations.
In the midst of this unraveling, family ties loosened and tangled, Scott Blackwood traces the line of connection that do endure. Set in Austin, Texas, the nine stories are told in spare language freighted with a sense of loss and dread, responsibility and fate. The characters in Blackwood's narratives face the result of the irrevocable choice they've made, accept their losses, and attempt to forge something meaningful out of what remains of their frayed connections to one another. And in the title story, neighbors ponder what, if anything, they can do about the disappearance from their midst of Odie Dodd, an aging physician who witnessed the Jonestown mass suicide in Guyana. He's currently working on a novel in stories about the stirrings of fate and chance in the lives of Odie Dodd and his neighbors.