The author of three novels and one collection of short fiction, Robert Bausch writes deft narratives that invite examination, refuse easy answers, and embrace a universalist vision of the human condition. All of his fiction interrogates the ways in which individuals, especially men, struggle with their inability to sustain the only fine thing in their lives: their authentic connections to family as an anchor. His ambivalence about the paradox of order powers his work: human beings live under the thumbs of systems and institutions that crush their spirits; yet, they require order and ritual lest they fragment into solipsism. Bausch's short fiction is especially luminous; in it he tends to avoid direct thematic statement in favor of suggestion and implication. In the stylistic tradition of Ernest Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, and John Cheever, Bausch presents deceptively simple narratives in which little of major moment occurs. In the narrative tradition...