Big cats

Collection opens with "Charlotte," in which a young girl breaks her pelvis the same day a voluptuous woman moves in next door. The narrator and her younger brother spy on their neighbor during a long hot summer night while their mother is out on a date, setting the tone of irrepressible yearning and curiosity that is evident throughout the collection. In "Get Away From Me, David" a bank manager tries to overcome his haunted past long enough to help a customer who has died in the lobby during a small earthquake. "Big Cats" pits two teen girls in an escalating catfight that culminates in front of the lion cage at the zoo where they work." Set in towns small and large up and down the West Coast, from Portland to southern California, all the stories in this collection are powered by loneliness, joy, fear, grief, hope, and, above all, redemption.