During the Civil War, a young man battles Indians, bandits and deserters as he escorts two camels, loaded with war loot across Kansas and Missouri. On the way he meets a boy who turns out to be a girl and falls in love.

The acclaimed author of Jesus' Son and Already Dead returns with a beautiful, haunting, and darkly comic novel. The Name of the World is a mesmerizing portrait of a professor at a Midwestern university who has been patient in his grief after an accident takes the lives of his wife and child and has permitted that grief to enlarge him. Michael Reed is living a posthumous life. In spite of outward appearances -- he holds a respectable university teaching...

"A novel of rare emotional power that excavates the social intricacies of a late-summer weekend -- and a lifetime of buried pain. Almost everything about Wallace, an introverted African-American transplant from Alabama, is at odds with the lakeside Midwestern university town where he is working toward a biochem degree. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends -- some dating each other,...

"Billie Letts takes readers on an unforgettable journey through the best and worst of America's heartland as she tells a story of two abandoned children desperately searching for people to call family and a place to call home"--Provided by publisher.

A young woman just passing through a Midwestern town in the 1950's touches many lives before she moves on.

Seventeen-year-old Steven "Stiggy" Gabel tries to cope with his father's suicide, his mother's depression, and his girlfriend's departure by taking off down the Great River Road from Minnesota to Louisiana.