Descending Fire & Other Stories

The author describes his characters as people who, though they earn little money, are not quite working poornor can they work without working hard. They do not know quite how to betray or abandon each other. Mostly, they try to love and do not readily shy from duty. Though Allmans narratives run from stark naturalism to the near magical and the out-and-out futuristic, his imagination holds to the everydayas if to say to his readers: Yes, life is grim, but it is precisely the unbearable that becomes the ground for healing.