Mapping a literary space uniquely his own, Evenson's CONTAGION AND OTHER STORIES pursues to a new level the crepescular and delirious exploration begun in his acclaimed and controversial ALTMANN'S TONGUE. In the O'Henry Award winning "Two Brothers," a minister breaks his leg while his sons watch then refuses to call an ambulance, remaining convinced even unto death that God will arrive to lift him up and make him whole. The self-acclaimed language specialist of "The Polygamy of Language" indiscriminately blends linguistics with murder. "Contagion" is a skewed retelling of the early history of barbed wire, which interweaves metaphysics and the Western genre. "Watson's Boy" shows a boy endlessly wandering the human equivalent of a conditioned response box while the protagonist of "By Halves" finds himself trapped in a relationship that may not exist. Throughout, Evenson's immaculate prose draws us mercilessly up to confront troubled and troubling lives that, astoundingly, are no less human than our own.