From tropical lushness to "blacksoil country, " from aboriginal outback to city streets, they reveal earlier, vulnerable selves, moments of innocence or shame, and unfinished business -- illumined by shocking flashes of unpredictable violence and pain, or glints of sly humor. In the brilliant cornerstone story, the stuff of dreams is both real and imagined -- rumored fields of cannabis picked in secret by migrant workers, or a nightmare encounter on a dark Sydney street. In "Night Training" a military recruit is scarred by his imagined complicity in a bizarre nightly ritual. In "Sally's Story" a "comfort" girl looks for comfort of her own. Here are men and women in search of connection, or equally wary of it -- whether with each other or past selves, shaped as we all of us are by the ghosts of history and the mysterious rhythms of nature.