Paul Bowers is a master storyteller, a subtle stylist who draws characters with the bold precision of a Flannery O'Connor, limns the loneliness of broken marriages and long distance drives with the quiet richness of a Raymond Carver. We meet flawed men and women striving to somehow be better people, and although they don't often achieve their yearning, it's in their journeys and their interior complexities that we recognize ourselves. Each story is a gem, illuminated by exquisitely rendered details: a hunter's knowledge of how to stalk wounded game or a native son's understanding of a Southern Plains family headed by a matriarch who holds the family in place "like posts driven into hard ground." Always, these stories are graced with the lives of animals, whether it's the cameo appearance of a feral cat or the narrative force of an injured wild turkey, the beasts in these stories come as alive for us as the human characters. We Will All Be Better People delights, engages the reader with beautiful language, insights, and stories that move with compassion and edge-of-your-seat narratives. Rilla Askew, author of The Hungry and the Haunted