The theme uniting the characters in these stories is ambition--not in terms of extravagant goals, but the simple and basic wants for their lives and those close to them. These elementary concerns deal with love, death, fidelity, fleeting time, the desire to comprehend their journey, a reassessment of their lives, and others of more modest dimensions but no lesser importance. Sometimes they want the nominally impossible, as in the harrowing Elsa, and at others the most mundane, as in the lighter Kickbacks. Sometimes, as in The Pharmacist, there is the shock of learning of the dichotomies that reside within those with whom we share our everyday lives. These stories illustrate the ways in which the characters are thwarted, often the instruments of their own defeats, how they try to compensate for these failures, and how in so doing they learn things about themselves that they might otherwise not get to know--or want to. Although, as in all stories, the intentions are ultimately serious, often traced through veils of loneliness, the interweaving of humor is not precluded.