One of America's premier writers, the bestselling author of Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, The Book of Daniel, and World's Fair turns his astonishing narrative powers to the short story in five dazzling explorations of who we are as a people and how we live.

Ranging over the American continent from Alaska to Washington, D.C., these superb short works are crafted with all the weight and resonance of the novels for which E. L. Doctorow is famous. You will find yourself set down in a mysterious redbrick townhouse in rural Illinois ("A House on the Plains"), working things out with a baby-kidnapping couple in California ("Baby Wilson"), living on a religious-cult commune in Kansas ("Walter John Harmon"), and sharing the heartrending cross-country journey of a young woman navigating her way through three bad marriages to a kind of bruised but resolute independence ("Jolene: A Life"). And in the stunning "Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden," you will witness a special agent of the FBI finding himself at a personal crossroads while investigating a grave breach of White House security.

Two of these stories have already won awards as the best fiction of the year published in American periodicals, and two have been chosen for annual best-story anthologies.

Composed in a variety of moods and voices, these remarkable portrayals of the American spiritual landscape show a modern master at the height of his powers.

"As one might expect of Doctorow, the title is ironic. In settings that range across the U.S., most of the alienated characters in the five stories here find life anything but sweet as they struggle to surmount the stigmas of poverty, lack of education and their instincts to gamble against the odds. Three of the male protagonists are passive and amoral; attempting to defend their irrational behavior, each reminds himself that he is not stupid. All of them — a young grifter who dutifully abets his mother's murderous greed on a farm near Chicago ('A House on the Plains'); a love-besotted accessory to a kidnapping in California (the slyly humorous 'Baby Wilson'); and a cuckolded member of a religious cult commune in Kansas ('Walter John Harmon') — share a capacity for self-delusion and self-preservation. The two female protagonists attempt to alter fate and find themselves buffeted by the inescapable force of male power. The protagonist of 'Jolene: A Life' is forced into a cross-country hegira in pursuit of a sweet land where she won't be an outsider. Scared and desperate despite her cool facade, Jolene becomes a victim in every relationship. If the story's denouement veers too close to soap opera, Doctorow's empathetic character portrayal redeems the plot twists. The most riveting narrative, 'Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden,' describes a presidential administration that is secretive, arrogant and contemptuous of ordinary citizens. In this knowing treatment of the cynical abuse of power, Doctorow uses the spare, laconic style endemic to thrillers and builds suspense with sure strokes. Boring like a laser into the failures of the American dream, he captures the resilience of those who won't accept defeat. Agent, Amanda Urban. 6-city author tour. (May 4) " Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"A riveting collection of five tightly plotted long stories....Fascinating work from a contemporary master." Kirkus Reviews

"Doctorow is at once a supremely entertaining storyteller and a profound writer of conscience, and he forges an extraordinarily potent blend of artistry, compassion, and covert outrage in his new short story collection..." Donna Seaman, Booklist (Starred Review)

"[Doctorow's] beautifully written, meticulously plotted, scrupulously imagined stories have the effect, for all of their depictions of savage behavior, of surrounding the reader with a civilized mode of being." Lee Siegel, The New York Times Book Review

"[A] slim volume...yet it shows as well as anything Doctorow has ever written that our present and our supposedly long-buried past are really quite interchangeable....[Doctorow] is able to move seamlessly from one time to another." The Washington Post

"[E]minently satisfying....[F]ive longish stories of varied misfits whose common trait, as befits a book that extends from Washington, D.C. to Alaska, is their utter Americanness." Ruminator Review

"Though it's refreshing to see Mr. Doctorow once again using his gift for storytelling...the tales in this volume are so attenuated that they feel more like outlines or movie treatments than full-fledged stories." Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"[A] volume of shards, a collection of marginal lives....Doctorow shifts his focus inward, giving us a glimpse of American on the fringes, of what happens when it all goes wrong....[D]ispatches from the dark night of the American soul." The Nation

"Doctorow is a riveting storyteller who has added just the right touch of bitterness to these affecting tales." Baltimore Sun

"[A] book that must be read....In a time when we have very little as Americans about which to be proud, it is to our credit that we have sanctioned E.L. Doctorow to speak for us." Houston Chronicle

"Doctorow shines plenty of light on contemporary society...but it's a harsh glare that those looking for escapism in their fiction might recoil from." The Oregonian (Portland, OR)

"Tone and content mesh in reader-friendly narratives that are nonetheless uncompromising....They are clear-cut and unadorned, proving that we are in the hands of an old pro who hasn't lost his touch with the basic tools of his trade." Miami Herald

"Sweet Land Stories prods the beached whale of the American dream in order to examine its underbelly. Less complex and tangled than his recent novels, these are deceptively simple but subtle morality tales that showcase Doctorow's deftness as a storyteller." Los Angeles Times

"Doctorow treats even the most unlikely losers with such a combination of humor and compassion that we connect to their problems and plights, however unsavory or self-inflicted." Rocky Mountain News

E. L. Doctorow is the author of City of God, Welcome to Hard Times, The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, Loon Lake, Lives of the Poets, World's Fair, Billy Bathgate, and The Waterworks. Among his honors are the National Book Award, two National Book Critics Circle Awards, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. Doctorow lives and works in New York.

A House on the Plains — Baby Wilson — Jolene: A Life — Walter John Harmon — Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden