The stories in this collection include a group first published in magazines three or four decades ago and another group whose magazine publications came in the past few years. Thus, they are divided into Old and New. Their range of subjects and approaches explore many varieties of storytelling.
Walter Cummins has published six short story collections—Witness, Where We Live, Local Music, The End of the Circle, The Lost Ones, Habitat: stories of bent realism. More than 100 of his stories, as well as memoirs, essays, and reviews, have appeared in magazines, in book collections, and on the Web. For more than twenty years, he was editor of The Literary Review.