From the earliest days of colonization the Long Water Land has endured cataclysmic change, it's once wild meadows and rivers transformed into an industrial and commercial center crisscrossed by railroads and interstate highways. In this constantly altered scenario the story of lives emerge. The reader encounters workers on a production line who once dreamed of life as a romantic enterprise; realists sitting on discarded lawn chairs in a public dump, commenting on a society that seems intent on burying the countryside in garbage. We sit with a divorced man in a laundromat on Christmas Eve estranged from his family; walk the aisles of a machine shop with a foreman suffering from depression; and sit in a wheelchair with a man tormented by memories of war service and the betrayal of a woman he adored. These are stories from the core of common life expressed in a way that makes them relevant to us all. We awaken from a night's sleep only to encounter the angel of death in our bathroom; join in a barroom conversation about the myth of paradise and how it can be realized on earth; listen at a funeral service as two men discuss the possibility of a life they once dreamed of and never realized. From reprobates to town officials, we hear the diverse opinions of the hopeful and disenchanted, and in their dialogues look for what will mirror our own experience.