Despite this collection's impressive scope, the quality of writing varies, and many of the stories are sentimental or preachy. Among the best contributions is "Baseball in July," in which Patrick Hoctel sensitively captures the fine tensions in a family when Paul brings his lover home. Lucas Dedrick's delicate and haunting "The Beach" focuses on a man who kidnaps his AIDS-afflicted lover from the stale-aired hospice for a few hours of sand and sun. In "Flying Low," Tom McKague conjures a set of vivid characters--including an ironic English teacher and a confused young man named Angel Scarafino--with snappy prose and bracing humor. Louie Crew offers the most convincing, though still sentimental, coming-of-age story, "Ben's Eyes," which follows a young boy's awakening to sensuality through his admiration of an older cousin in rural Georgia. Altogether less satisfying is Walter Rico Burrell's "Rites of Passage," a melodramatic and gruesome portrait of a child who not only suffers his drunken father's anger but is molested by a neighboring reverend.