“O’Nan has the rare gift of shifting perspective, often in the same story, without any sacrifice of intensity or authenticity. In this book we see life through the eyes of—among others—a ruined farmer, a black day-laborer, a young cop separated from his family and descending into madness, an old Chinese grocer; all of them vividly alive and different from the rest, yet mysteriously joined by the author’s feel for the weight of the histories they carry.” —Tobias Wolff, from the citation for the 1993 Drue Heinz Literature Prize