Cracked Wheat and Other Stories

These ten stories present unexpected moments in the lives of a variety of characters. An immigrant boy befriends a neighbor girl living with her father in a dilapidated shack, and learns the meaning of depravity in a way that his Calvinist upbringing has never prepared him for...A minister in a small rural church is asked to drive out to the remote home of one of his parishioners, a stubborn pig farmer, to find out why the man wasn't in church the day before, and ends up delivering an unexpected sermon...A university student delivering bread door to door for the summer is invited by a lonely woman to come inside for a cold drink, and discovers a reality that is more complex than the world of his books...A young man runs away from his strict home to join a circus, only to discover that he has been pursued all the while by a familiar yet mysterious figure who catches him when he is least prepared...A father drives his teenage daughter to her dance lesson held in an old church, and learns for the first time the truth of his ancestors' belief that the body is a hold temple. Unified by their Dutch-Canadian subject matter, these stories convince the reader with their clear detail, their honest perception, and their larger vision.