These stories are rich in intimate glimpses into the inner worlds of quietly extraordinary people: a man who wants to give fatherly love to his girlfriend's son; a farmer who regrets the loss of a great tree from her front lawn for her family's satellite reception; an immigrant who tells his American wife the same two old family stories and only fixes two-stroke engines.

Rick Rofihe's work has been well received by critics at The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and Washington Post Book World.

Bruce Allen in The New York Times Book Review wrote, "These surgically precise slices of intelligent life are distinguished by virtuosic phrase-making and fetchingly off-beat specifics." Gregory McNamee in Washington Post Book World wrote, "Rofihe speaks convincingly in many voices." Rick Rofihe's stories were praised in The New Yorker with these words: "... brief, mostly first-person stories about the riddles of communication and the grammar of loneliness. Rofihe's oblique narratives are coded messages, waiting to be deciphered." He is a Whiting Award winner and has taught at Columbia University.