If Tom Abrams sang the cracker blues in his novel A Bad Piece of Luck, he's playing jazz riffs in this collection. These are gritty stories: stories of loss, abandonment, war, confusion, and despair. But Abrams keeps such an ear out for character that we come away from each story nodding, "Yes, yes" in a strange affirmation. And he has an equally observant eye for setting. You'll shiver in a Vietnamese monsoon while watching a swollen, hungry river, you'll sweat in a Belizean jungle bar and its brothel, and you'll bounce in a Spanish train as you look out the window in wonderment to see a friend from the narrator's past sharing a ghostly bottle with two winos. Just as if death, by nearing this Madrid station stop, had somehow been cheated. Just as if the bullet this friend had placed in his head five years before had been a magician's sordid trick.... Yes, yes, and yes. Placed in Madrid, Belize, Vietnam and Ohio, these stories carry the built-in joy of varied settings. Combine that with Tom Abrams' sure eye for character, situation, and understatement. Voila! The entire collection becomes an unavoidable, magical delight.