In these sixteen tales, the author captures the joys and frailties of seemingly ordinary lives with extraordinary perception and wit. The stories take us from a Manhattan diner to a train station in Vietnam, from the Wild West to small town Australia, in a dazzling display of faith in language and in life. A man staying in New York pretends to be blind and inveigles his way through the defences of a lonely diner waitress; a child beggar in Vietnam makes his determined way through loss and into the world; a father falls prey to the temptations of the internet; a client discovers his psychiatrist's startling secret; and a wife sends a beautiful, but shocking, letter to her husband, the postman. Each delicious story transports the reader into another world and life with authorial grace and an assured lightness of touch.