Bonfire

Like shards from an Anasazi pot, fragments of writing can describe the whole piece. Eleven selections are included, chapters from three novels and pages from eight stories. There is a long tale about a boy who wins sixteen lotteries in a row, inflaming entrants and targeting him for kidnap. An artist buys an Italianate house in California and moves in her bohemian friends and family, to the dismay of neighbors. Remembrances of past times in the counterintelligence world come back to haunt in several stories. A successful portrait painter takes the family to Bora Bora for a troubled season of art and obsession. A man in mid-life would like to forget his boyhood music lessons.