Includes a new story, "Body Language"! Now in paperback, Eric Puchner's celebrated debut collection, a finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, established him as one of our most brilliant and promising new literary voices.
Writing from an impressive range of perspectives -- men and women, children and adults, immigrants and tourists -- Puchner deftly exposes the dark, tender undersides of his characters with arresting beauty and precision. Here are people fumbling for identity in a dehumanizing world, captured in moments that are hilarious, shocking, and transcendent, sometimes all at once. Unfailingly true, surprisingly moving, and impossible to forget, these stories make up an extraordinary and strikingly original collection.
From an acclaimed young Wallace Stegner Fellow and Pushcart Prize winner comes an exceptional first collection of stories about cultural outcasts attempting to navigate mainstream America.
"This is the most auspicious debut of a short story collection that I have encountered in years....If there is any justice left in the world, this book will be widely read and celebrated."
-- Charles Baxter, author of
The Feast of Love and S
aul and Patsy 
