A Primitive Heart

"A Primitive Heart is a collection of stories that moves into areas untouched in David Rabe's previous work, cutting to the quick of American manhood and revealing the distance within the most intimate relationships. Whether he is writing about a marriage shadowed by the unacknowledged discord of a risky pregnancy, about a group of men whose attempt to settle an account launches them toward unexpected violence, or about a young journalist who believes he's escaped his Catholic roots, but is forced again to confront them by a priest who once was his mentor as a writer, Rabe's voice tenders an…