Erudite and funny, nostalgic and fanciful, these stories unlock the secret
longings and unlooked-for victories that make up everyday life. Whether he
finds himself in the stands at Yankee Stadium on Bat Day, or, as in “Aunt
Daisy's Secret Sauce for Hamburgers,” caught off guard by the myriad ways
in which a recipe and its misspellings are a window into the woman who
wrote it years before, or gently exploring how loss and love get
intertwined for a “Bee Girl,” Hayward writes with a sure sense of his
characters and the complex, imperfect worlds they inhabit. Talent and
passionate complexity have created an elegant and unforgettable collection
of stories that are assured in depictions of characters and distinctive in
voice.