Home is a lifetime of events and episodes regardless how long it plays out and how well or poorly it is lived by each person. The stories in this collection are "hunched" in every sense - with bowed humility, anticipated forward into the unknown, and imbued with all the hope and longing we crave for ourselves. Every life is like entering a new house with a need to familiarize oneself with the rooms, hallways, stairs, cellar and attic like a child seeking comfort and security, a shell for our frailty. Many of these stories (His Mother's Son, River Child, Wading Deep Memory, The Warehouse) confront children with harsh realities, while others (The Mountain Trail, Oldy & Weaking, Toothless Old Man, Turn About) relate tales of adults coping with predicaments painfully unresolved. The cover story, Hunching Homeward, revisits the truth that we can't really return home because those left behind have gone on just as we have, and no place really exists called home; like nomadic snails, we carry home heavy on our back and travel toward ourselves. It is the ultimate subjective residence of our place in the universe. Richard Vaughn was born in Illinois in 1933 and moved to California in 1944. He is the author of two novels, Soldier Boys and Mesa beach, as well as four short story collections: Childhood Country, Rapture Runner, Parlous Passion and Soshal Scientz. He lives in Mission Viejo, California