"Assimilation is founded on surrender and being broken. This collection of short stories features people who have assimilated, but are actively trying to reclaim their lives. There is a concert pianist who defies death by uploading his soul into his piano. There is the person who draws his mother's ghost out of the bullet hole in the wall near where she was executed. Another character has a horn growing out of the center of his forehead--punishment for an affair. But he is too weak to end it, too much in love to be moral"--Amazon. com.