As the book's title suggests, the reader is immersed in a dark and dying world, a kind of North Dakota Winesburg or Spoon River, though perhaps bleaker and more hopeless. The light and life of the narrative are provided by the author's prose exceedingly rich in detail, fi nely tuned for dialogue, and relentless in its probing of the characters' depths. There's no question that the author knows this territory thoroughly, intimately.