From John Hersey, whose literary legacy includes such classics as the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Bell for Adano, the ground-breaking Hiroshima, The Wall, The Call, and, more recently, Blues and Antonietta, here is a final collection of superb stories.All of the tales in this volume are set in Key West, a place that Hersey knew intimately. He captures the hot, sun-filled spirit of this old Spanish town as it was in its early settlement and as it is now, a climate "kind to bright-blooming greenery and to joys of the flesh." Intertwining tales from the past that have become legend with contemporary stories that reflect the pulse of life there today, Hersey weaves a fascinating and many-layered tapestry. His landscape is peopled with artists and rakish professors, sailors and swindlers, anglers and other fanatical sportsmen, swamp rats and drifters, foolish girls and presidents.With a mastery that has been honed over a lifetime, John Hersey plays with the ironies of fate in these witty and poignant tales: a hot-tongued preacher heeds the words of St. Paul, outwits his flock, and wins the race; a man who always manipulated others, and who is dying of AIDS, finds himself at the mercy of his caretaker; John James Audubon visits Key West and slaughters hundreds of birds - simply for the sport of it; at an annual Fantasy Fest a young man proposes to meet his "blood mother" for the first time - in disguise; an obsessive windsurfer's love of the wind costs him his wife; Hardy Truman gets good advice during his morning constitutional and invents a new game called Key West.Completed shortly before his death in 1993, these stories have the same magic, taking hold of our imagination and lingering in the mind long after. A splendid finale to an extraordinary writing career. Read Less