Dallas, TX: Southern Methodist University Press, (1996) dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - A collection of twelve short stories by this award-winning writer, several set in and around the Texas oil fields, ranging from "intimate family portraits to broader pictures of art and culture and politics. From the sometimes humorous predicaments of the American gender wars and domestic change, to class conflicts, to artistic innovation with its personal costs, to the horrors of the Stalinist period and the more recent Middle Eastern wars, the twentieth centurys violent history haunts these stories." Ann Beattie called it "the strongest Ive read this year. Its full of detail, believable conversation, and thought-provoking ideas. Really: read this. SIGNED on the title page. 181 pp. ISBN: 0-870744038.