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In 1916 literate cowboy Devon Young reflects on his life's journey. Saved from death by a shamanic intervention, he embarks on a quest to rescue his love, Dahlia de Belardes, from banishment in California. Out to hunt buffalo for their wagon train, Devon's father fails to return, requiring Devon and his mother to survive a hard winter of 1861 in a hastily-built sodbuster cabin on the North American plains. Devon's mother becomes a teacher to Navajo survivors of "the long walk" -- one of many historic brutal forced marches toward captivity. With sympathies attached to the Navajo people, Devon is exiled from Fort Sumner's army community and painted as a renegade son "gone Indian". After his mother dies of fever, Devon's entry into Navajo culture is furthered by the tribal elder's offer of shelter in recognition of his mother's past kindness. A hunting expedition with his Navajo friends results in a nasty encounter with a group of Apache interrupted during a medicine ceremony. Devon's life is saved by a crow's intervention, a shamanic rescue that profoundly imprints his psyche, exiles him from the Navajo tribe, and lends mythic shape to his western adventure. In Taos, New Mexico, Devon falls in love with Dahlia de Belardes, the virtually captive daughter of a prominent and traditional Spanish father. The eventual discovery of their relationship results in Dahlia's banishment to Mission Santa Ynez in California, and to Devon's journey to find her. On his quest, Devon joins up with a trail outfit, befriends Socorro, a Californio, survives run-ins with rampaging Commanche, a crooked faro dealer, a vengeful posse, and other encounters with frontier mortality. Sagas predictably provide both their heroes and anti-heroes a true home, whether into a sunset, an embrace, a grave, a rocking chair, or the epiphany that they somehow missed the train. Devon's completion requires cleansing of the Apache's shamanic imprint, and extraction of Dahlia from her exile, and their arrival in Laguna Canyon, California, within earshot of Pacific surf, where they ride the last wild horses and learn how each moon shapes tides that call fishermen toward the sea.

In Japanese, "Sarinagara" means "and yet". This word is the last word of one of the most famous poems of Japanese literature. When he writes it, Kobayashi Issa has just lost his only child: yes, all is emptiness. But Issa mysteriously adds this last word to his poem, leaving its meaning in suspense. This enigma is the theme of a narrative that brings together the stories of three Japanese artists across the centuries: Issa, the last great Haiku master of the 18th century, Natsume Soseki, inventor of the Japanese modern novel at the end of the 19th century, and Yamahata Yosuke, who was the first photographer to take pictures of the victims and ruins of Nagasaki in August 1945. These three "dreamed lives" make the substance of a narrative that takes the reader from Paris to Kyoto and from Tokyo to Kobe, and asks the question of how anyone can hope to survive the most heartbreaking experience. "Surviving is both the test and the enigma." Following the death of his young daughter, the narrator moves to Japan with the project of writing an essay on Japanese literature. There, on the other side of the earth, he experiences a series of incidents that connect him to a recurrent childhood dream and allow him to explore the depth of his own grief through the stories of others. "Sarinagara" is a poignant meditation on the nature of grief, art, and memory.

Michaels, one of the most highly regarded contemporary American literary figures and widely read by the discerning public, has long been regarded as a master of the short story. His stature can only be enhanced by this gathering of the best of his previous work as well as new stories, all of them written within the period of the early 1960s to the 1990s. Love and sexuality are the twin themes he continues to mine, and the specific situations he creates to explore these themes pinpoint in the sheerest of prose the absolute truth about relationships. Michael''s trenchant, direct, and lyrical style, with not one word wasted, works as a tight springboard for conveying his vast knowledge about why we love who we love. No library''s short story collection is complete without this career-defining compilation.

In The Face of the Deep we float on and submerge below the ocean''s liquid mirror, surfing and diving in a "continuum, concatenation, of sunrises, sunsets... one''s consciousness itself rising and falling with the swell." From villages in Samoa to haunts in Hawaii, Thomas Farber tells of encounters in bars and backwaters as he explores Oceania''s mythologies and literatures. From treasure hunters of Cocos Island to writers of the Literary Pacific, from Stevenson and Melville to the indigenous writings of Wendt Hau''ofa, Farber navigates the complexities of the Pacific and its peoples. With the play and music of his language, Farber''s shimmering reflections give us a fresh appreciation of the Pacific''s depths.

Philip Daughtry writes, both autobiographically and fictionally, of love, intellectuality, danger, and farce. Daughtry trespasses federal land in Oregon to greet a wild stallion; follows a young cheating husband through pagan Ireland as he attempts to heal a wounded bird to win back the trust of his wife; visits a doomed drunken poet in Helsinki; finds first love, for a night, in 1960s Paris; works with an insane cowhand in lawless Belize backcountry; traffics special cargo into Ireland; describes the lives of children living and playing in an abandoned prison camp in northern England; travels with gypsies along Spain's Gold Coast; and speculates on a flooded world where haunted men sail between mountaintops of islands.

Cultural Studies. Jewish studies. As told to Hilton Obenziger, with an introduction by Paul Auster. RUNNING THROUGH FIRE is the story of Zosia Goldberg and her incredible survival during the time of the Holocaust. Her story features resistance at every turn, narrow escapes, and help from the most unlikely sources. At times suffering bitter betrayals by fellow Jews, she also encountered unexpected sympathies from some Nazis themselves. Zosia's story is as much a chronicle of the Holocaust as it is everywoman's struggle against human folly and depravity. "RUNNING THROUGH FIRE is a book filled with unspeakable horrors--but it is told wihtout a shred of self-pity. Zosia Goldberg never complains, never bemoans her lot. She battles and endures, and in this raw, unvarnished tale of human suffering, she has given us a manual of hope"--Paul Auster.