Fiction. Full of what Booklist has described as "breathtaking lyricism, sensuality, and catharsis," A .38 SPECIAL AND A BROKEN HEART reveals the degree of Jonis Agee's prodigious talents. The thirty stories in A .38 SPECIAL AND A BROKEN HEART manage to pack emotional detail and compelling narrative into sagas of people who love, lose, and try again. Honest and biting, gentle and witty, these stories flesh out the bare dramas of most human lives. Persistence and strength, betrayal and forgiveness, weakness and acceptance, life and death--all find themselves played out in this collection. "Spirit resounds in the splendid economy of Agee's deft characterizations and sharp, visceral imagery.... Explores the tangled intersections of love and death"--Publishers Weekly. "Short-short story writing at its best. It deserves to be read, read again, and passed to every story-loving friend on down the road"--Albuquerque Journal.