Sometimes people have to make desperately hard decisions. Some escape consequences, some are redeemed, and some meet a merciless fate. "What on earth were they thinking?" people ask. These intense an unsettling stories reveal exactly that. Russell Wangersky’s characters, caught in a variety of human circumstances, make some outstandingly bad decisions. A labourer enjoys new-found popularity among his co-workers after losing several fingers in a work accident. So, in the face of returning invisibility, he makes a desperate decision. An elderly shut-in chooses to believe the lies of her own life and the world view she absorbs from talk radio. And finds the scapegoats that both those distortions of reality require.