"Here I Am" is a collection of seven stories about loss and our capacity for self-deception. In settings as diverse as an egg factory, a mental hospital and the border of Zaire, these stories deal with lives that have taken a disturbing and unexpected turn. The storytellers include: a sardonic trial lawyer confronting her mortality, a young girl whose unusual bond with her twin brother is tested by their father's incomprehensible act, a newlywed at odds with his wife who discovers the price of marital peace, a teenage rebel forced to reconsider her corrupting influence on a younger brother, a boy whose feelings for his imprisoned father are shaped by seventeen years of contentious correspondence, an American tourist encountering unforeseen danger at a border crossing in Africa, and an adolescent boy struggling to understand why he killed his grandfather. These people share only one thing in common -- they find it easier to delude themselves than to acknowledge the truth that they know in their hearts.