An American master of the unsettling side of the American male psyche, Barry Gifford is also noted for the depth of feeling of his female characters-from Lula in Wild at Heart (immortalized in the Lynch movie by Laura Dern), to Big Betty Stalcup and Miss Cutie Early in Night People, to Mom in Wyoming (a Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year), to Ava Varazo in The Sinaloa Story. Fellow novelist Jim Harrison once described Gifford as "a stylist in the manner of Tom McGuane and Joy Williams, with the heart of Raymond Carver." What is certain is that the big tent of his human circus comprises men and women and children all more or less equally. In most of his Roy story collections things revolve around young Roy, but here in this latest collection, it is the mother, Kitty, and her friend May June who take center stage

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