Everywhere there is water. Nearly all these stories explore basic human characteristics - poverty, puberty, loss, hope, aging, dementia, racism, gender identity, mischievousness, love - with the ocean or a river or a pond or a beach as background. In these stories a sailor sprinkles her husband's ashes in the Bahamas, two misfit teenagers take each other's measure on a peninsula's granite outcropping, and a man encounters a mama bear and her cubs on a remote Aleutian island. Sometimes the water is merely benign setting; more often it reminds the reader of the obstacles that all of us encounter. Intimacy is the key to these stories - the reader will feel close to these characters, even affectionate toward many of them. All will feel familiar, even intimate.