God Bless America: Stories

Steve Almond

In the exuberant title story, a hapless would-be actor, desperate to escape the drudgery of his existence, lands the role of a lifetime. In “Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched,” reprinted in Best American Short Stories, a psychoanalyst with a secret gambling addiction squares off over the poker table against a damaged ex-patient. In “First Date Back,” a young woman becomes the target of a traumatized soldier’s misguided hopes for love. And “A Dream of Sleep,” the collection’s final story, presents a grief-stricken refugee who tends the graves of a forgotten cemetery, only to have his fragile peace shattered by an unwelcome visitor.