This powerful new collection of James Lee Burke's short fiction ranges across landscapes that he has made his own, from rural Louisiana and Mississippi to war-tornVietnam and a New Orleans ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. Told with his trademark blend of lyrical prose and hard-eyed realism, they bring a host of extraordinary characters to vivid life: soldiers and prostitutes, nuns and children, musicians and gangsters; movingly exploring 'the near certainty of tragedy to come and the smoldering embers of possibility in the ashes of blighted lives.' (Booklist) Whether bittersweet evocations of childhood and a New Orleans that was 'a song, not a city', or pain-fuelled tales of wartime atrocities and the destruction of a modern-day Atlantis, these stories go right to the heart of the American experience, confirming James Lee Burke as one of its most profound chroniclers.