These stunning stories explore, with poignancy and wit, the treacherous, alluring, and sometimes painful territories of memory, family, and friendship. These stories teach us that even "the right people" can harbor hideous secrets, that love, embarrassment, and food can assume bewildering and heartbreaking combinations and that there are many ways of being used by--or using--other people. Hammond's stories probe beyond the surface of our lives to consider the complexities that underlie the most ordinary of relationships and the painful difficulty by which even small insights are achieved. Her characters sometimes flinch from their hard-earned wisdom, but their journeys to comprehension offer the reader a rich and unforgettable experience. These are stories to be read with pleasure and wonder.