Nothing says America louder than a gun. As the short stories assembled here demonstrate, firearms loom as large in our imaginations as in the news. In this unforgettable anthology, the common theme, and the essential object, is the gun.

These striking stories, from such famous authors as Annie Proulx, Bonnie Jo Campbell, and John Edgar Wideman, plus a talented group of newcomers, range widely—from tender to violent, from chilling to hilarious. Tales of love, war, coming of age, and revenge, they occur in landscapes familiar or ordinary, distant or dystopian, and reflect Americans’ particular obsession with, and paranoia about, guns. This masterful and thought-provoking collection moves beyond the polarized rhetoric surrounding firearms to spark genuine discussion.