Challenge the Widow-Maker and Other Stories of People in Peril is about ordinary people who have not always done well with what life has dealt them — ex-cons, hardluck boxers, aging surfers, Puerto Rican dirt farmers, lonely old men living in tenements. When crises enter their lives, they have to find the strength, the humanity, to meet the challenges. In the moving "Custer's Ghost," one of the last survivors finds closure half a century after Little Bighorn. In "The Dakar Run," a former race car driver must find the integrity to stand up both to gangsters and to the grueling desert race in northern Africa. In "Animals," an old man who has lost his late wife's cat joins a street punk to free tortured animals. In these and nine other tough but compassionate investigations into the human condition, Clark Howard demonstrates why he is one of the finest storytellers of this generation.

Contents:

• Introduction
• Horn Man
• All the Heroes are Dead
• Puerto Rican Blues
• Challenge the Widow-Maker
• Animals
• Scalplock
• The Dakar Run
• Custer's Ghost
• Plateau
• Split Decisions
• Mexican Triangle
• The Dublin Eye
• Clark Howard: A Chronology