Valentine, Texas begins with two men, lifelong friends, hunting buddies, guys who shot reflector lights out of mailbox posts and fought cowboys and Indians in grade school, and now find themselves on opposite sides of the law in a showdown. The threats they make are real, but are couched in careful language, and in fact great care is the hallmark of their interaction. Instead of confronting events squarely, they circle them in wary, oblique rhetoric. The second part of the collection moves away from Valentine but retains the same basic ideas of language, isolation, and failed companionship. The collection reaches its finale at a bridge in Kingfisher [Oklahoma], a place where fish are falling, at a moment when everything is falling.