Lost and old rivers

The ten stories and one long semi-autobiographical "story from memory" in Alan Cheuse's new collection represent a wide range of characters in settings as disparate as Niagara Falls; Lake Charles, Louisiana; a small town in Nebraska; and sixteenth-century Mexico City. Here are stories about damaged women whose scars, literal and figurative, bear testament to the loves they've lost; about contemporary men unnerved by the messes they've made of their lives; about disrupted families, separated by physical and psychological abysses. Cheuse's narratives display an edgy vitality underneath their surface gloss.