These nine stories chart emotional and spiritual boundaries of the human experience. Teenage boys search for sex, love and bomb shelters amid the lawns of suburban Boston. A homeless woman pursues the Pope by phone. In the frozen north, a prison escape plays out the delicate balance between compassion and betrayal. Set in off-season Cape Cod to the urban streets of Southern California, Smolens' stories often combine the raw force of a blizzard with the emotional confinement of a confessional.