Going unnoticed must be the root sorrow for the broken.

A greying, sunburnt American mis­sionary stopped us in the fruit market and invited us for a drink.

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Before I opened for Joyce Carol Oates at her reading at Harbourfront in Toronto, we had dinner: Oates and her husband, Raymond Smith; the organizer, Greg Gatenby; and me.

In this excerpt from Steven Heighton's new book, The Dead Are More Visible, a firefighter must decide what lives are worth saving in the heat of a four-alarm fire. The official line is that firefighters save people—but what about reptiles?

At first the sound was like a raw stropping of steel on steel although we had little such heavy stuff along...