Everett Winter is a young boxer and farmhand who forsakes his rural heritage and carries the
weight of a small-town tragedy with him into unfamiliar, urban territory, where he rapidly
discovers “Towners” are less than welcome…

In other stories from this unique debut collection, a pair of notorious hell-raisers slam down
boilermakers with an infamous police chief; an amateur filmmaker ponders the importance of
titles, often pornographic; an oddball freelancer watches a lost dog drown; a busker abandons art to sample octopus with the rich; and a prophetic mentor exercises a fatal degree of influence on a young, impressionable poet.