In the title story, a bunch of college kids get hooked on a card game, discover the possibility of protest.....and confront their own collective heart of darkness, where laughter may be no more than the thinly disguised cry of the beast.

In "Blind Willie" and "Why We're in Vietnam", two men who grew up with Bobby in suburban Connecticut try to fill the emptiness of the post-Vietnam era in an America whice sometimes seems as hollow-and as haunted-as their own lives.

In "Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling", Bobby returns to his hometown where one final secret, the hope of redemtion, and his hearts desires await him.