“Ten stories cut like gems from American family life . . . [with] a gracious patina and a drawl of violence.” —Los Angeles Times “A writer of the first rank. . . . [Knight] writes gently and with great gobs of empathy.”—Esquire “Wonderfully humane.” —Playboy A Los Angeles Times Notable Book, Michael Knight’s stunning debut delivers ten tales of ordinary people seized by extraordinary circumstances as their attempts at human connection result in frustrating false starts and ruinous misunderstandings. Knight expertly unveils fragile family ties, secret compulsions, and the nagging doggedness of love as he taps into our collective human experience to remind us, with unerring, piercing insight, of what it means to be alive. By turns unpredictable and wise, sorrowful and triumphant, Dogfight and Other Stories reveals the transformative power of life’s small struggles.