This new collection of linked short stories from award-winning author Jeff Fearnside explores the lives of ordinary people in Kazakhstan as they face the challenges of post-Soviet transition in the early 21st century. These stories illuminate the soul of a people tested by their circumstances: a man struggling between tradition and his conscience, a woman remembering her coming of age during perestroika, a woman who through memory comes to identify with "the other," a husband and wife who seek reconciliation through the words they''ve used to hurt, and a grandfather who lost his loved ones and now must face his past.