Few writers can match Lewis Buzbee at capturing the American family disrupted by challenges from the outside world, or from within. These are powerful, moving stories of such families. Even when life conspires to tear them apart, Buzbee's families cope, they figure out what comes next. Though not connected in any narrative sense, the stories share a common thread: how to live after the disaster, after the gold rush is over and the gold has run out. Still, Buzbee's characters dream big and love deep, and each story in the collection is raw at the core, wholly memorable, and dedicated to the courage of loving.

Anchoring this collection is the novella "An American Son," destined to become a classic. Here is a story filled with pathos and humor about a 17-year-old high school junior who, to the amazement and utter consternation of his parents, defects for a time to the Soviet Union and becomes a writer, returning eventually to the Best Westerns of America. It is a vehicle that provides Buzbee with a new leverage on contemporary culture, and a hip take on the writer's life.

Lewis Buzbee is a third-generation Californian, and has been writing since age 12. After earning his MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, he published his first collection of short stories, "Fliegelman's Desire," from Ballentine Books. A former bookseller and rep for Chronicle, his book on reading and the publishing business, "The Yellow Lighted Bookshop," is to be released simultaneously from Graywolf.