A Lebanese housewife, a former horror-film maker, and a cantankerous Russian librarian are among the inhabitants of the offbeat world found in this impressive debut collection. Stacy Tintocalis ’s stories take us from a defunct women’s shelter off a Missouri country road to the streets of low-income Hollywood, where her characters yearn for the love that is always just out of reach. The title story explores the conflicted emotions an adolescent boy feels toward a father who obsessively returns...
