A teen-age girl is awakened in the wee hours of the morning to serve as her father's getaway driver when he pulls a shotgun robbery at a poker game. A woman bar owner in the French Quarter shoots a drug-addled, would-be robber dead, then covers up the incident with the help of the police. A small boy in Alabama loses his incence with the death of a goldfish. From the author of The Letter Writer, the engaging Civil War vel, w comes this poignant collection of short stories set along the Gulf Coast that are at once humorous, touching and disturbing portraits of working-class people, and blaze a new trail directly into the heart of the American South.