This collection, featuring 16 essays, introduces us to a variety of fascinating characters. As Jeanne Marie Laskas tells us, she enjoys finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. Here, she writes about the many personalities she has encountered in the everyday world—the woman who pilots balloons, the man who trains and races pigs, the men who work on barges traveling the Monongahela River, a groundhog, Tom Cruise, Geraldo Rivera, her cats, the people and performers of Branson, Missouri, the woman who makes Slinkys--and through her unique storytelling abilities, she allows us to see what makes these characters truly extraordinary.

This collection gives us a talented storyteller, a fresh voice, someone who can take us along to look at the world from a unique perspective.

"How was I to know," writes Laskas in her introduction, "that when the dog trainer was a boy, he was attacked by a giant, evil poodle in his dreams? How was I to know that the vacuum cleaner salesman's father was a failed Fuller Brush man? How was I to know that Geraldo Rivera drives a boat named "Bubba" to work? How was I to know, when I first met Constance Wolf, that so many adventures could be hidden inside this old lady sitting on a farm tractor, dressed in army fatigues, pearls, and with a thin, black veil stretched across her face?"

Review
"Truth is definitely stranger than fiction. Just ask author Jeanne Marie Laskas. Her first full-length collection of stories...culls several interviews from newspaper work that Laskas has conducted with both the famous and the not-so-famous, including Tome Cruise, Geraldo Rivera, Betty James -the creator of the Slinky -and Constance Wolf, a world-champion hot air balloonist."
– American Bookseller