Joe Bennett, Dixie Mae Crandall, Hattie Cooper, and Clarence Cobb are hardly exemplary citizens, but they color the pages of this book with recognizable humanity. Thornburg, Indiana, is the kind of town in which such characters are not only tolerated but accept-ed as part of the scenery. Their lives intertwine, sometimes in spite of their intentions. Often against the odds they support and help one another to greater hope and a better life. Too involved with each other's business to be objective, they nevertheless regard one another with tolerance or, at their best, with love and admiration. With no two people alike, they form a mosaic of American life on a small scale, a kind of confusion which, as E.B White has noted, "makes a democracy so lovable and so frightening." You will likely find people you have known--or perhaps yourself--in these stories.