In a wide range of genres, from mythic parable to gritty realism, these twenty stories explore the most intimate encounters between husbands and wives, parents and children, lovers and strangers. In one story, an ex-movie stuntman relives watery memories of pleasure and panic from the arid terrain of his afterlife. In another, a precocious ten-year-old girl composes an email plea for reconciliation to her estranged grandfather. In yet another, a retired midwestern couple face existential crisis in a Hawaiian paradise. Blending terror and delight, dissolution and renewal, each vivid tale surprises the reader with a clarifying moment, reminding us that life is a balancing act between sacred and profane, and we must hold on to the one, without letting go of the other.