In three dreamy and introspective stories, award-winning author Morrissey takes us to a remote and frigid landscape where blinding white snow and sky are indistinguishable, and those who must venture out to pit their resolve against icy weather lose their way and possibly their senses. We encounter a terrified adolescent girl seeking a midwife for her mother, an older farmer hunting the coyote that killed his sheep, and the village mortician, whose life has long been devoted to the dead, heading out to collect his next client. In 2014, Morrissey began writing about the inhabitants of an unnamed Midwestern village, and it has become his Yoknapatawpha County. First Kings and Other Stories represents a work in progress that is again set there.