In Dear Everyone, Gregory J. Wolos, delivers a collection of short stories that reflect Kafka's assertion that literature "must be an ice ax to break the sea frozen inside us." The characters Wolos creates come with the honesty of flawed humans. Whether they are cruel, insensitive, manipulative or ignorant, there is a belief that all is right with the world if only you'll let it be. In one story, Wolos discusses the murmuration of starlings, "With special cameras they've determined that each individual bird only looks at the nearest six or seven around it. Visually, anyway, no single bird knows what the whole flock of thousands is up to. The shape the flock takes seems like it has to be somebody else's idea, not theirs." This is the metaphorical "ice ax" Wolos uses to pick away at that frozen sea within us. We read his stories as if the characters are the six or seven birds closest to us, but when we step back and look at the whole clouded sky, we see ourselves, we see that the triumph of the human spirit is possible.