Author Description

PRESSURE OR frustration—or simply grief—can do wonders for one’s creativity. Six of the stories in this collection were written beside my wife’s deathbed. For some three months she was in the hospital battling cancer, submitting herself to the indignity of operations and shaming me with her bravery in withstanding pain and accepting the inevitability of my being widowed. Grief is purely academic until you have it. But then life—and literature—must go on. —L.P. Deriada, from the Preface