Living with the Hyenas

Hyenas are among God's strangest creatures. Both scavenger and predator, they prey on the old, the weak, and the helpless, and even on their fellow predators in the jungle, the lions. Even though they are braver and more dignified, lions must always contend with packs of hyenas that dog their paths. Lions live their entire lives locked in deadly competition with hyenas. Like the lions, the people in Robert Flynn's short stories learn to make accommodations to the hyenas and to a society and culture that tolerates hyenas. Whether they find themselves in Vietnam or rural Texas, Flynn's characters are often heroes in the most personal sense of the word and by standards which matter only to them. Flynn's stories make us look again at ourselves as they probe familiar if difficult subjects - the innate cruelty children inflict on each other, our detached fascination with those who are physically handicapped and deformed, the difficulty of giving and receiving gifts, our intolerance of and lack of compassion for the elderly.