“All Things Betray Thee” wears its bleeding heart on the pages:

“We are the something that happens, Katherine. If we are still, the world’s a desert.”

Is stuffed with aphorisms:

“A man pinned under a rock will show bruises, if not understanding.”

And gleams in a sun epiphanic and restless:

“I’ve heard of such men, Eddie. I’m not like them. The feel of other men’s lives is rough as sandstone on my face. I dodge away from it, that’s the great aim of all my breathing. I give as little of a damn for whether they find salvation as for whether they find gold or dung or amethyses or smallpox or whatever it is they feel will belly out their lives. But I’m glad such men exist as feel the fever of a boundless misery. Somehow, somewhere, I suppose they keep the root of something watered, something that off and on serves as a magnet even for the slowest, daftest feet.” ( )