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...