Kimberly Verhines is a wicked writer, and the characters of the short stories in Drinking Rum from a Paper Cup are a resilient, powerful group of Misfits, akin to Flannery O'Connor's violently redeeming crew in A Good Man is Hard to Find. Verhines's heroines and heroes may not be "good men," but they are truly good exhortations of the human grotesque. Her ladies let car jacks fall on abusive husbands, go to whatever evils are necessary to buy their daughters' medicine, encourage just a little more morphine for elderly matrons because, after all, she's no deader than the rest of us already. Readers will find amazement in the women who collect fleas on their socks just to drown them, and, in similar fashion, set their husbands up with crazy women just to cure their cheating hearts.