First published 2011
A road builder commands bulldozers and graders by day but loses himself in miniature trains at home, until the women around him shatter his private world. A stenographer stuck in her typing pool gets an unexpected call from a fleeing robber who makes her a bizarre offer. An old newspaperman finds himself judging Christmas displays, a task that leads him to a flashy ex-convict and something unexplainable. A widow on a hog farm receives mysterious letters from a stranger in Schenectady writing about spiritual longings. When she decides to meet him, she discovers something she never anticipated. These characters move through a landscape of trailers, factories, and small-town bars, chasing dreams of fortune, fame, and love that twist in unexpected directions. They face a world that seems both cruel and absurdly indifferent to their hopes. Vonnegut captures ordinary people whose ideals collide with reality, revealing how dreams and fears shape lives in ways both tragic and comic.
Genres: fiction, short-stories, american-fiction, 20th-century, contemporary, adult-fiction
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: dreams-collide-with-reality, ordinary-people
272 pages · Hardcover · Delacorte Press