A corporate worker abruptly quits his job to make the world's greatest mozzarella cheese; a widowed Bed and Breakfast owner dishes out advice along with spoonfuls of his deceased wife's last batch of jam to the suitor who buys a house sight unseen hoping the woman he loves will move in with him. There is the new mother who takes a lover right under her doting husband's nose, the young boy who flees one dangerous country to start a new life in another, and the transgendered son who discovers his mother's clairvoyance. The characters in these stories are not afraid to take tremendous risks. From El Salvador to Cape Cod to Antarctica, from a secluded Italian Snake Festival to a packed subway car to a World War II bomber, in this collection of stories men and women cling to ambitions, thwarted love, and misguided assumptions, as they dream to reinvent themselves, seek revenge, foresee the future, recapture that which has escaped their grasp, or merely survive. Fueled by passions and desires, they must choose between illusion and reality despite all repercussions.