Scavengers

The stories in <I>Scavengers</I> are about people fighting to gain or hold onto some good. For the six-year-old heroine of <I>Dixie Lee</I> it is innocence threatened by her kidnapper. Gilda the young English teacher of <I>Scavengers</I> disappointed in love wants a baby by artificial insemination. Middleton the bumbling and incorrigible romantic of <I>Following Keats</I> seeks love in Italy. In <I>Fish or Fowl</I> Isabel Larkin lost in La-La land seems uncertain about her identity--but not about doing what is right. Jeff Franklin in <I>This Day in Yankee History</I> tries mightily to convey his respect and liking for a distrustful young black boy he meets at the ballpark. These and others--a handsome alcoholic a sex-obsessed homeless man an ambitious cop a professor drawn toward violence a guilt-ridden man with a snuff movie--all struggle to possess a small part of what they have lost thrown away or never had.</P>