Urban paranoia and rural innocence are the themes of these stories, in which W.D. Valgardson moves effortlessly from examining West Coast city life to fishing the inland sea of Manitoba.

With a quietly understated and often disturbing realism, Valgardson explores domesticity, the trials and tribulations of ritual and routine, the terror of the everyday. It is his attention to the small details, the simple acts, that makes his stories so individual and accomplished.