The eleven short stories in Low Tide in the Desert celebrate a master storyteller's longtime fascination with Nevada, from the deliberately hallucinogenic urban distractions of Reno and Las Vegas to disturbing legends born in Jackpot and Battle Mountain. Some of Kranes's characters we want to know; others we would go out of our way to avoid. But he treats his vivid cross-section of humanity with dignity and even a tenderness completely without sentimentality. Some win, some lose, some are transformed, but, quintessential Nevadans, they all hope.