Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

In 14 short stories, Jones, author of the acclaimed novel The Known World 0 (2003), demonstrates his skill at drawing complex and nuanced characters and predicaments. Washington, D.C., is the setting for this collection of stories in assorted time frames with assorted characters, most of whom come from the rural South, and all of whom are coping with the transformation of their lives and their adjustments to a new way of life. A young husband and wife, Aubrey and Ruth, are confounded by the faster pace of a city where babies are abandoned and love cools. A young man, anticipating his last days in D.C. as he dreams of a new life in Alaska (a novel place for a black man), is captivated by a murder investigation he reluctantly agrees to do for a family friend and the last words of an old white woman. He cradled the woman in his arms after she was struck by a streetcar and heard her dying words, spoken in Yiddish, words that haunt him--and threaten his future plans--although he doesn't understand them. Arlene is cursed by her uncanny survival of a lifelong series of tragedies that has taken those around her since childhood. Her sadness and loneliness are briefly broken as she meets kindred spirits in a young girl and a Guatemalan woman. Jones' stories are rich in detail and emotions as he plumbs the intricacies of people's relationships with one another and with spiritual forces at work in urban as well as natural environments. Readers who enjoyed The Known World0 will relish these varied gems of Jones' talent for storytelling. --Vanessa Bush Copyright 2006 Booklist

Library Journal
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Short fiction from National Book Award finalist Jones. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The punishing legacy of poverty, crime and racism spans several generations, in the Hemingway Award– and Pulitzer Prize–winning author's long-awaited second collection. Wielding with enviable precision the elegant, plain style that so distinguished his earlier stories (gathered as Lost in the City, 1992) and single novel (The Known World, 2003), Jones probes deeply the wounded yet often resilient psyches of an imposing gallery of vivid, varied characters. A convicted murderer released from prison after 20 years finds unapproachable the family he had disappointed and betrayed, but makes himself of use by tenderly preparing the body of a former acquaintance for burial ("Old Boys, Old Girls"). A young girl raised among a family blighted by alcoholism and lawlessness glimpses a hopeful future in the promise of a school that accepts, nurtures and challenges her ("Spanish in the Morning"). A retired army officer cannot control his lifelong appetite for younger women and fast living and becomes—in a way he had not foreseen—"A Rich Man." Elsewhere, one woman meets the Devil in a Safeway supermarket, another is struck blind while riding a bus—and their ordeals redefine them, stunningly. A "blessed one" who mysteriously survives catastrophes that claim numerous less-fortunate souls reaches a hard-won maturity, and eventually comprehends the nature of her "gift" and the obligations she must accept ("A Poor Guatemalan Dreams of a Downtown in Peru"). Like Alice Munro's, Jones's stories exfoliate unpredictably, embracing multiple characters and interconnected histories and destinies. In "Common Law," domestic violence infects and transforms a peaceful neighborhood. In the brooding title story, a Korean War vet's murder investigation proves that "Blood spilled with violence never goes away." And in the magnificent "Root Worker," a woman doctor learns from an aged "voodoo woman" that we are often helplessly and unknowingly the cause of our own—and our loved ones'—pain. Jones's engrossing, exquisitely crafted and unforgettable stories offer images of the African-American experience that are unparalleled in American fiction. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Publishers Weekly
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Following the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Known World (2003), Jones offers a complex, sometimes somber collection of 14 short stories, four of which have appeared in the New Yorker. As in his previous collection of short fiction, Lost in the City (1992), Jones centers his storytelling on his native Washington, D.C. Here, though, Jones broadens his chronological scope to encompass virtually the entire 20th century and a wide range of experiences and African-American perspectives, from a man who has kept the secret of his adultery for 45 years, to another whose most difficult task on leaving prison for murder is having dinner with his brother's family. Often, Jones presents characters who have been away from the South long enough to mourn the loss of values and connections they traded for the too-often failed promise of urban success, but he also portrays the nation's capital as a place of potential redemption, where small curses and small miracles intertwine, and where shifting communities and connections can literally save one's life. Each of its denizens comes through with his own particular ways and means for survival, often dependent on chance, and rendered with unsentimental sympathy and force: "Caesar flipped the quarter. The girl's heart paused. The man's heart paused. The coin reached its apex and then it fell." (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved