Christopher Tilghman's second collection of short fiction compares well to his first, In a Father's Place, published nine years earlier. Mining the same territory (geographical and emotional), Tilghman presents husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters in situations that require of them a candid re-evaluation of family relationships that have been fraught or tenuous. Tilghman is masterful at probing beneath the immediate surface of his characters' motives, characters who are occasionally at serious odds with their lot in life, who are searching for a way to fix what is broken or to make a final break. Many of his characters are tentatively exploring the soft edges of a new reality. Some are surprised to find themselves seeking to make peace with a family they left behind for reasons they now find inadequate or mistaken. Landscape plays a huge role in these subtle dramas--Tilghman uses American geography like no one else, giving texture and depth to the lives of people who are in all respects ordinary. Like those collected in his first book, the stories in The Way People Run reward subsequent readings with new revelations about language and what it means to be human. ( )

A great example of what quality short stories should be. Moving and well-written. ( )