Luke Rivers is a part-time bartender and full-time gambler who dreams of scoring big at the dog races. He travels the greyhound circuit with his wife, Jenny, and their young son, Jake, until one morning he wakes up in a motel in Rapid City, South Dakota, to discover that Jenny has left him and taken Jake with her. Now, for the first time, Luke must confront himself—both the tragic family past that led him to gambling and the uncertain future that lies ahead--while coping with a bewildering present. The Greyhound God is the account of Rivers's anguished search for understanding and purpose.

Morris evokes with deft intelligence the colorful world of dog racing and the characters, human and canine, who inhabit it. But this is merely a background for the travails of Luke and his little family, the cheap motels and dusty dreams, the tensions between Luke's tender love for his son and his obsession with his betting "system." Luke's dilemma—whether to pursue Jenny or to continue his gambling life—is complicated further by the presence of a beautiful, sympathetic woman he meets after Jenny leaves, by his painful memories of family tragedy and personal breakdowns, and by a seemingly miraculous winning streak at the track.

The Greyhound God is a powerful novel of self-discovery by a writer at the top of his form. Seldom in contemporary fiction has the troubled psyche of a compulsive gambler been examined with such empathy and insight, nor has the world of gambling been depicted with such dead-on clarity.

In "Objects Past the Shoreline," a young man in the process of losing his sight struggles to accept the irrevocability of blindness while clinging to what independence remains. He spends his days reading poetry and exploring the world around him: "I went up close to see—Indian paintbrush, the thick buds scarlet and dusty. I closed my eyes and searched for the flowers' imprint, for the red scar the buds would cut across the blackness." Gradually, the world darkens around him, leading the story to a conclusion of wrenching poignancy. Morris is a writer of remarkable skill, and these stories of small-town men groping for a perspective on themselves and the lives they've come to live are among the most powerful in contemporary fiction. This is the work of a major talent coming into his prime.