As he moves among these unfortunates, Wolff observes the disparity between their realities and their dreams, in ten stories of exhilarating lucidity and grace. An aging soldier is distracted from a night of philandering by a gun-toting neighbor and a suicidal enlisted man. A show-biz hopeful undergoes a dubious audition in a hearse speeding across the California desert. A gentle priest finds himself in a Vegas hotel with a hysterical, sun-burned stranger. Unfortunately, the men and women in these gripping, pungent, and wonderfully skewed stories have only the vaguest notion of what normal is. To Tobias Wolff's characters, Back in the World is where lives that have veered out of control just might become normal again. To American soldiers in Vietnam, "back in the world" meant America and safety.
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