Poet Costello opens this story by stating that there is one brother in his large family he loves. That brother is a policeman, who becomes entangled in a murder. The rest of Poet's clan he holds at arm's length, questioning his mother's fidelity and perhaps the blood that runs in his veins. The tale takes him into a remote logging operation in the Northwest woods during the World War II, when boys became men before their time. It is there, in the...