As a boy delivering newspapers after school, author John L. Moore once found a copy of Playboy magazine on the grass beside the sidewalk. In Skunks, Nuts, and Other Stories, he details the dilemma that picking up the magazine created for him.

Moore’s collection of two dozen yarns told by and about members of his extended family reveal the humor, sadness, heroism, resourcefulness, and resiliency that his family members experienced in dealing with the world around them. Without meaning to, they sometimes took part in historic events and had chance encounters with famous people.

Its real-life characters include an aging Vietnam veteran who refuses to forget his long-dead comrades; an uncle telling about his great-grandfather’s Civil War trophies; a teenage girl selling cookies to buy groceries for her younger siblings during the Depression; and a father who plays Santa Claus for his son’s Kindergarten class.