Set in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York-and in places between and beyond-these stories feature characters baffled by where they are in their lives. Several focus on returns-the emotions that roil, the dark secrets that press against the heart. A son attempts to endure a short visit to his parents, anxious about the effect such a tension-filled trip might have on his usually sunny wife. Home for the holidays, a thirty-something father tries to understand his life through the lens of sports. An abuse-haunted man, back in town for the funeral of a brother, encounters a former high school classmate who gives him a tour of her shrine to a fam ous rock-n-roller. A divorced mother, responding to a shocking family tragedy, sets out with her young daughter for the home she wishes she could forget. In the title piece, a novella-in-flash, a young woman escapes serious family dysfunction by moving away to college; however, she learns her hometown is a place she cannot so easily leave behind. In these and other stories, characters are coming and going, forever shaped by where they are.