Short, fat, fifty-ish, ugly and Scottish, Race (not his real name) is a very married family man who lives in Northwest Indiana, beside Lake Michigan dunes, old oil refineries and the grinding steelworks of the Rust Belt's heaving heart. He resides in a large, creaky old haunted house, with teenaged and grown children, a woman whom he regrets he did not marry many years sooner than he did, an old dog, three mad cats, and a lifetime of good memories.