The title of Russell Banks' sixth collection of stories - and his first in almost 15 years - seems fitting. Since the appearance of his first book in 1975, the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist has come to be considered a patriarch of the family of American letters, having written such acclaimed novels as 1985's Continental Drift, the exquisite one-two punch of 1989's Affliction and 1991's The Sweet Hereafter, 1995's Rule of the Bone, and 1998's Cloudsplitter.