The stories in "Scavengers" are about people fighting to gain or hold onto some good. For the six-year-old heroine of ""Dixie Lee"" it is innocence, threatened by her kidnapper. Gilda, the young English teacher of ""Scavengers,"" disappointed in love, wants a baby by artificial insemination. Middleton, the bumbling and incorrigible romantic of ""Following Keats,"" seeks love in Italy. In ""Fish or Fowl"" Isabel Larkin, lost in La-La land, seems uncertain about her identity--but not about doing what is right. Jeff Franklin, in ""This Day in Yankee History,"" tries mightily to convey his respect and liking for a distrustful young black boy he meets at the ballpark. These and others--a handsome alcoholic, a sex-obsessed homeless man, an ambitious cop, a professor drawn toward violence, a guilt-ridden man with a snuff movie--all struggle to possess a small part of what they have lost, thrown away, or never had.

The stories in "Scavengers" are about people fighting to gain or hold onto some good. For the six-year-old heroine of ""Dixie Lee"" it is innocence, threatened by her kidnapper. Gilda, the young English teacher of ""Scavengers,"" disappointed in love, wants a baby by artificial insemination. Middleton, the bumbling and incorrigible romantic of ""Following Keats,"" seeks love in Italy. In ""Fish or Fowl"" Isabel Larkin, lost in La-La land, seems uncertain about her identity--but not about doing what is right. Jeff Franklin, in ""This Day in Yankee History,"" tries mightily to convey his respect and liking for a distrustful young black boy he meets at the ballpark. These and others--a handsome alcoholic, a sex-obsessed homeless man, an ambitious cop, a professor drawn toward violence, a guilt-ridden man with a snuff movie--all struggle to possess a small part of what they have lost, thrown away, or never had.