Lex Williford's seriously eccentric characters find that traveling down life's highway leads to the breakdown lane as quickly as it leads to the fast lane. Their quirky philosophy can best be summed up by Bucklin Rudd, who just lost his business and his wife after losing the last bit of his good sense: "Nothing like working half your life for something just to find out you think you're pretty damn sure you don't want it." The ten stories in Macauley's Thumb - set variously in Texas, Old and New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Alabama, and Illinois explore the complicated lives of disenchanted characters who find ways to express their grief at the losses they face under impossible circumstances, losses so large and so small that no one - not even Smiling Joe's Insurance - can cover them.