Nude in tub

Here is G.K. Wuori, out of nowhere and wielding a deadly weapon: his vision of our America...in the raw. He's here, in this daring debut collection, to reflect what's on his mind: America's fascination with violence, with sex, with racism, with joyful immorality.

Set in a town "usually omitted from cheap maps," Nude in Tub is about a young couple who make love on La-Z-Boys on the highway's centerline, about an old woman with a pine tree rooted in her leg, about newlyweds who paint their house black and themselves white, and about several stripped-down others, including, of course, a nude in a tub.

These people - each of them caught in a particularly startling moment of nakedness - are Native Americans and interloper Americans at the millennium, good citizens whose reality has been tweaked, twitted, quirked, smirked, and found to be grimly goofy. They are rich men, poor men, doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs, husbands and wives, little children (some who lose their lives), parents, teachers, all living by the same credo: If you're in trouble. we'll help. But we'll still laugh like hell.