Gary is the author of seven short story collections, including A Room of Rain; The Proper Words for Sin; Sorry I Worried You, a winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction; and The Killer's Dog, an Elixir Press Fiction Prize winner. His stories have appeared in such magazines as the Missouri Review, Kenyon Review, Black Warrior Review, and CrazyHorse.

The new and selected stories in this collection, written over a period of thirty years, are firmly entrenched in the culture and people of rust belt cities and rural Appalachia.

These stories are often set against large, significant events like the Cold War, Vietnam, and the Kent State shootings, but are always uniquely local: A mother fends off the police by brandishing copperhead snakes; a woman cares for the dog of an alleged double murderer, a husband who has lost his job works at trying to save his wife from a debilitating phobia.

"There's no glamour in Gary Fincke's world, just tough times and hard work. From early on his people know how uncertain life can be--how easy it is to lose hope, and how, sometimes, to get by, we bury what we can't face." -- Stewart O'Nan, author of Snow Angels and Last Night at the Lobster