Narcissi, a novel in stories, brings us into the world of Cole Burnett, a Texas writer, who needs to keep moving. At first, it’s something in his blood, pressing him, pushing him to write more, achieve more. Later, after the death threat, it becomes a way of staying alive.

Cole is the kind of man who should send women running in the opposite direction. But he has a lanky western charisma and the gift of listening to them, a rare quality in the 1980’s.

The women he encounters have complicated lives–conflicts with husbands, traumas survived, needs postponed, children. They find Cole’s attention compelling, and they all get hurt, or cause hurt, to a greater or lesser degree. But hurt is never the whole story.