The Burning Ground

Moving from remote, sun-scorched towns to the charged hum of Venice Beach, this collection of eight stories explores fractured lives on the West Coast. A man visits his long-distance lover in Los Angeles and forges an unexpected bond with a fellow traveler; the foreman of a desert building project journeys into California’s underworld when his employer’s daughter disappears; and an artist finds peace in exile after the disintegration of an affair.

The stories peel back the layers of their protagonists—a deadbeat dad, a much older lover, a drifting divorcé—to reveal interiors both unexpected and beautiful in their complexity. Written with a poet’s lyricism and an outsider’s keen eye, this insightful work of beauty and poignancy paints an intimate portrait of diverse male lives.