Twenty intersecting tales of estranged love, political oppression and the human comedy. In "Mourning Crazy Horse," the Sioux chief"s betrayal and final passion are counterpointed with a contemporary American"s journey across the United States. "Underbelly (1)" details the bizarre goings on of a yogi who falls in with a pornographer and his band of outcasts. In "Plattsburgh," a woman tries to rescue an owl on her way to the library only to become entrapped in circumstances neither she nor anyone else comprehends. "Moctezuma"s Dreamer" investigates the relationship between enforced deprivation and art, whereas "The Artificial Son" is concerned with the deprivation which promotes kinship, union, "Swede" is the the first of several narratives in which Rosen the humpbacked dwarf practices social commitment on the unwary. Social commitment is in fact the predominant theme, but it is usually conveyed obliquely through fictions which are distinctly individual, richly textured, at once poignant and mordantly funny.