Uncompromising, often dark, and always insightful, Dying Light explores the mysteries of duty, forgiveness, power, and love through a broad range of narrative voices. We meet a football coach who seeks to avenge his wife's affair, a delusional poet who escapes from a hospital as the bombing of Baghdad begins, a woman whose son was killed in a car accident, and an almost-widower wistful about his first love. In these and other stories, Hays illuminates his characters' most secret and human realizations with unwavering candor and clarity.