Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of
Workman Publishing
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014

© 2000 by Dwight Allen. All rights reserved.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.
Design by Anne Winslow.

“Deferment” was first published in The Southern Review; “Fishing with Alex” appeared in a different form in Gulf Coast; “The Green Suit” was printed in The Missouri Review and New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, 1997, “The Hazeletts’ Dog” in American Short Fiction, “Succor” in The Georgia Review, “Overtime” in Shenandoah, “Among the Missing” and “Not Renata” in The New England Review, and “Goat on a Hill” in The Journal.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following: Excerpt from “Makin’ Whoopee” by Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn, copyright 1928, copyright renewed 1955, by Donaldson Publishing Co. and Gilbert Keyes Music, Inc. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Excerpt from The Bald Soprano by Eugene Ionesco, copyright 1958 by Grove Press, Inc. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. Excerpt from “A Coney Island of the Mind #14” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, copyright 1958 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. No reference to any real person is intended or should be inferred.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for a previous edition of this work.

eISBN 9781616202224