Essence & Folly: Twelve Short Stories (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781462042272)

Set in and around a small town in modern-day Belize, Essence & Folly chronicles the lives of several poignant and comical residents from Santo Innocencio.

A humorous fishing story of revenge gone wrong entitled "Ole Gyal and Jackanapes" exposes some of the difficulties arising from the generation gap between a cantankerous Mayan grandmother and her "half-limey" grandson.

"The Voice over the Water" recounts Do a Elena's days of interminable melancholy and loneliness following the death of her husband. Three months after her heartbreak, the widow finds herself at the edge of a cliff, confronting her own mortality.

"Don Gabriel Loco" is a madman serving out the final days of a twelve-year sentence for the botched execution of his ex-wife's lover. While in jail, he records the colorful details of that bloody evening in a diary. Eventually, through deliberations with God, Shakespeare, and Diablo, he arrives at the decision that he must finish what he started-in six seconds fl at-the moment he's released.

Believing this is his best shot at a normal life, a lonely bachelor enlists the help of a mule to pursue the love and attention of his neighbor in "The Love Story of a Garbage Man."

In "Leonid and the Mini-Commander," a shopkeeper wonders whether his obsessions and compulsions are the result of prompts from a mini-commander hiding in a bunker lodged inside his head.