Set in the town of Redgunk, Mississippi -- with a population of 400 people, a dog with black, smelly lips, and a mummy -- these interwoven stories owe as much to Sophocles as they do to Flannery O'Connor, exploring the human condition against a background of swamp gas and lawnmower fumes. Redgunk is a place where Otis Zebrowsky, cable repairman, can suddenly be sucked into a mythic world older than ancient Greece; and where intelligent women like Mina Thorton can find absolute happiness in the guise of a made-to-order alien mate. In these stories of ghosts, alien abductions, and genetic experiments gone awry, immersed in a setting singing with cicadas, crawling with kudzu, and as redneck as any in the South, characters live and breathe with genuine hearts.