Welding with Children

A New York Times Notable Book of the YearIn eleven raucous, touching stories, Tim Gautreaux's Welding with Children traces the course of sin and redemption through the lives of small-town women and men in Louisiana. His unforgettable characters include a grandfather who discovers, while taking care of his grandchildren, that they are growing up without any sense at all of right and wrong; a camera repairman who discovers a woman's secret in her undeveloped film; and a one-armed hitchhiker who changes the life of the man who picks her up. Each one a small miracle of storytelling and compassion, Tim Gautreaux's stories are "a pleasure from start to finish. You want to hand [this book] to your friends and say 'read this' " (The Plain Dealer).