A History of Barbed Wire

In intense, lyrical language, Jeff Mann's short stories give us an array of tormented characters: adulterous lovers, a kidnapper and his handsome victim, the sadistic ghost of a Confederate soldier, a yearning forestry student, an eager masochist, and a hairy biker. These tales explore the sex and psychology of BDSM and of bear culture, and most are set in Mann's native Appalachia, an area often mythologized as a place where the wilderness within converges with the wilderness without.