Warmly praised by Ann Beattie, Charles Baxter, Robert Boswell, and Stuart Dybek, these stories are evocative, slyly humorous, and novelistic in scope, featuring such memorable characters as Annie Yun, whose aching heart and passion for country music has her longing for a cowboy; ex-fisherman Alan Fujitani, marooned in romantic widowerhood; and the wildly competitive "Oriental Hair Poets", Marcella Ahn and Caroline Yip, in a battle of wits for the attention of Dean Kaneshiro, whose handcrafted chairs are museum pieces. The title novella, a finalist for a National Magazine Award, follows Danny Kim from his disastrous foray into boxing as a teenager to his ascent into Boston society as a management consultant -- his life both driven and poisoned by his paranoid fear of racism.