In the Country of the Young

The short stories from In the Country of the Young feature characters struggling to find hope and connection--or just escape--through art, work, and love. The title story, a moving account of an angst-ridden seventeen-year-old nearly overwhelmed by his family's aspirations for him, is a paean to the brief moment when the promise of youth and selfhood are untarnished by the disenchantments of life. In "Foxx Hunting," a widower travels to LA to find a porn actress, though the movie he saw her in was shot decades earlier. "Lunch with Gottlieb" captures a young man of ambition hunting for the legendary advertising genius Gottlieb, lost in the jungles of business lunch.

Garnering comparisons to the work of Bernard Malamud and Saul Bellow, the stories of In the Country of the Young are written with the rare empathy and skill of a short fiction master.