Tobias Wolff Books in Order

American soldier Christopher Woermer serves as an adviser to a Vietnamese Army division during the Vietnam War. Troubled by his limited usefulness, he confronts the absurdity and damage of a conflict that resists straightforward explanations or heroic accounts.

These twelve stories follow ordinary people whose assumptions fracture under unexpected pressures. A lying boy, a timid professor, strangers sharing a ride and an elderly couple at sea reveal the uneasy distance between self-image, moral certainty and everyday behavior.

Ten stories follow people hoping to recover a sense of normality after their lives drift off course. Priests, performers, soldiers and estranged relatives confront unsettling encounters that expose the distance between what they want and what they understand.

Three young paratroopers awaiting deployment to Vietnam form a bond while guarding an ammunition dump threatened by fire. A series of thefts then unsettles their confidence in one another, revealing the vulnerabilities beneath their shared bravado.

Tobias Wolff recalls moving across 1950s America with his mother and struggling under an abusive stepfather in Washington. Adolescent schemes, anger and self-invention become part of his effort to escape and imagine a different future.

These stories examine ordinary lives pushed toward moments of consequence: a sudden bank shooting, a premature obituary, a troubled father and a sister confronting her brother’s faith. Childhood, war and memory expose the unexpected weight of individual choices.

At a prestigious boys' school, literary competitions offer students private meetings with celebrated visiting writers. News that Ernest Hemingway will visit intensifies their rivalry, testing the honor, loyalty, and friendship they claim to value above everything else.

New stories join selected earlier work in this collection of characters facing moral and emotional reckonings. A retired Marine, a lawyer and an American abroad encounter circumstances that unsettle their assumptions about love, responsibility and how to live.