Cheap Talk and Other Blasphemies

Borne of the imagination of a woman who grew up in a transient Navy family, the six stories in this collection are about outsiders. The characters in them are people who are stunned at the amorphous quality of the world, at the way familiar places can seem unfamiliar; the unfamiliar, familiar. People who—just when they thought they'd figured it all out—discover they've gotten everything mixed up or that they've let themselves be hoodwinked, seduced by "cheap talk." They are also people who think that they've better off alone, who are convinced they don't need anyone, only to find out they do. The stories are arranged in a way that reflects a preoccupation with the minds of children—the way they learn, the way they teach us. In the first story, a young girl learns to accept her nemesis, and then the collection moves through two stories, one that shows the surprising wisdom of a teenage boy and another in which a teenage boy' guilelessness triggers a teacher's understanding. The fourth story, "Qi," is the only one without characters who are children—this story, though, is still about starting over and renewal, two ideas that connect with children in the rest of the collection. The next story builds on the themes of understanding and self-awareness as another young woman finds a noblesse oblige has led her to social work with children, and the last story is of an older woman who reluctantly befriends a young boy. Throughout, the characters grapple with their beliefs, with novel perspectives, with seeing the world anew as children do over and over again as they grow and learn.