2:12 a.m. is an insomniac’s tour of counterproductive bedtime stories, Vegas weddings, Southern funerals, Nevada’s nuclear testing grounds, Patty Hearst, Marina Oswald, sleepwalking murderers, Louise Bourgeois’s Insomnia Drawings and more, revealing what wakeful nights conjure for a North Carolinian turned Californian, a farm child turned suburbanite, a 1960s romantic turned fatalist and a once-but-no-longer “gifted” sleeper.

The collection, comprised of Best American Essays notables, Pushcart Prize nominees and the winner of Drunken Boat’s Editors’ Choice nonfiction award, mixes the strictly autobiographical with voice-driven reportage and includes essays that are factual, meditative, investigatory and lyrical to take full advantage of the versatility of the form. 2:12 a.m. is a book for all who revisit the past and brood on the future—a book about the dislocations of contemporary life, the hauntings of memory, and the perennial search, late night or otherwise, for meaning in existence.