A well-known novelist in free-fall returns to his former life only to play a role in its final, heart-rending destruction. What he does next throws his own survival into question and may decide the fates of near-strangers that he has quickly grown to care about. A disturbing episode in a crowded Waffle House pushes a faltering relationship past its breaking point. An elderly man pays yet another visit to the site of a tragedy that has colored his entire life. A Loss for Words & Other Stories collects 10 years' worth of such tales, often depicting the human side of decay and abandonment. A journal of the author's frequently harrowing experiences while performing vegetation surveys throughout the remote Cumberland Plateau region of eastern Tennessee is also included. In 2004, John Mulhouse started the City of Dust blog, dedicated to photo-documentation of the numerous derelict historic buildings and abandoned places along the Georgia-South Carolina border. Over time, occasional fictional (and not-so-fictional) pieces began to make their way onto City of Dust. The majority of these are contained in this anthology.