Hailed by Frank O'Connor as one of "the greatest living storytellers," J. F. Powers, who died in 1999, stands with Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, and Raymond Carver among the authors who have given the short story an unmistakably American cast. In three slim collections of perfectly crafted stories, published over a period of some thirty years and brought together here in a single volume for the first time, Powers wrote about many things: baseball and jazz, race riots and lynchings, the Great Depression, and the flight to the suburbs. His greatest subject, however—and one that was uniquely his—was the life of priests in Chicago and the Midwest. Powers's thoroughly human priests, who include do-gooders, gladhanders, wheeler-dealers, petty tyrants, and even the odd saint, struggle to keep up with the Joneses in a country unabashedly devoted to consumption.

These beautifully written, deeply sympathetic, and very funny stories are an unforgettable record of the precarious balancing act that is American life.

Table of Contents

The Lord's Day

The Trouble

Lions, Harts, Leaping Does

Jamesie

He Don't Plant Cotton

The Forks

Renner

The Valiant Woman

The Eye

The Old Bird, A Love Story

Prince of Darkness

Dawn

Death of a Favorite

The Poor Thing

The Devil Was the Joke

A Losing Game

Defection of a Favorite

Zeal

Blue Island

The Presence of Grace

Look How the Fish Live

Bill

Folks

Keystone

One of Them

Moonshot

Priestly Fellowship

Farewell

Pharisees

Tinkers