The first collection of the short stories of Harry Mark Petrakis was nominated for a National book Award in Fiction, establishing him as a master of the form. Revealing commentaries by the author introduce each story in this collection. In "The Passing of the Ice, " Polish icemen suffer the fate of some great doomed Greek line. In "The Song of Rhodanthe" a fleeting vision of love flowers within a grim social prison. In "The journal of a Wife Beater" an insufferable chauvinist male discovers to his horror and bodily peril, that is wife is younger and stronger than he is.