The Man Back There
By David Crouse
224 pages. Sarabande.

Looking back in anger, the men in David Crouse's second collection of short fiction acknowledge "the simple fact that there [is] danger in the world," that it sometimes resides in their own fists, clenching and unclenching. Like Barry, the loveless, regretful dogcatcher in "The Castle on the Hill," characters in The Man Back There (Sarabande) also give in to bouts of tenderness. Crouse makes you believe, if not in miracles, then in life after the implosion of the heart.