In Home Plate Was The Heart & Other Stories , Joseph Milosch deftly accomplishes the poetic economy and emotional epiphany that writers of flash fiction regularly strive for but only rarely achieve. There is an earthy authenticity to Milosch's work, bone-true and honest. These are stories about tough working class people with frangible souls: a truck driver's wife dying of cancer wonders if her husband truly loves her when he's gone so much; renegade soldiers return from Nam addicted to heroin; angry fathers and rebellious sons face off gripping hammers in their hands; a dying woman's husband gives her a heart-shaped box of Valentine's day candy with divorce papers tucked inside. Baseball often serves as a blueprint showing immigrants how to become Americans. Milosch's imagery is fresh and spot-on, as with the dancing girl whose "footsteps kept time like the beating of a pack of Camels against the palm of a young man." It's a fine collection that offers the reader a happy marriage of poetry and fiction. - William Luvaas, author of Going Under and Ashes Rain Down: A Story Cycle