In the shadow of our house

"In "Alias," a man grapples with the decision to kidnap his stepdaughter's child and raise her himself. During a medical crisis, a woman in "New Years" is forced to confront her teenage son and comfort her ex-husband's lover. In "Worry," a fifteen-year-old faces his father's infidelity and his own darkening vision of himself and the world around him.

And in the title story, neighbors ponder what they can do about the disappearance from their midst of Odie Dodd, an aging physician who witnessed the Jonestown mass suicide in Guyana."--BOOK JACKET.