I've written a lot about destiny in my fiction, admits Richard Russo, "not because I understand it, but because I'd like to." In the first of these 11 remarkable essays, Russo shares the story of his onetime fiction workshop classmate who was considered to be bound for literary glory—yet it was Russo who emerged as a major writer. How, he wonders, did he manage to steal his classmate's destiny? In each of the pieces collected here, Russo considers the unexpected turns of the creative life: his grandfather's years cutting gloves, reflections on Dickens and Twain, his own teenage dreams of rock stardom, and accompanying a dear friend—the writer Jennifer Finney Boylan—as she pursued gender reassignment surgery.