Add to ORKGRecurring characters, including two reformed linemen, one megalomaniacal preacher and another kind one, a misunderstood young Wiccan, a grizzled alligator poacher, and a formidable ex-trucker-turned-bartender meet and mingle throughout this collection. Many of the stories use narrative experimentation--for example, broken, distracted structure in a story about teenagers rampaging, or eviscerated language in a post-apocalyptic vignette--to examine themes of community, history, and faith. Linking them all is the lake, which binds them geographically and becomes a symbol of their many different lives, all flowing together from the primordial, swampy headwaters, through the residential calmness, to the dam where they break into rainbows above t...