Fifteen pithy, humorous, and heartwarming autobiographical pieces describe either trips Willem Lange has taken-to Alaska, France, Texas, and elsewhere-or, in a metaphorical sense, the long journey of his own life. As always, embedded unobtrusively within his tales, are profound ruminations on life and death, love, nature, and God.

"I have noticed how much my joy in people has run as a bright thread through the whole fabric of my life,"he explains. "The stories in this collection are about some of those people who in the last fifty years have brightened or darkened-but always enlarged-my life. They are my constant companions on the luminous little brooks of memory."