This prize-winning collection brings to life skiers, ranchers, cyclists, suffragettes, tourists, super models, dead pigs, burro racers, religious beet farmers, immigrant miners, scorned lovers, penitent centenarians, and musicians. Some historical, some contemporary, its stories revel in their Western settings, as varied as the region's landscape. Yet each story explores the ways society's values clash with our individual desires, compelling us, despite tears or laughter, to weave our lives through these opposing forces, often creating not a lifeline, but a noose.