"Sam Michel is such a smart, manic, virtuosic stylist . . . the kind of deep insights that make you suddenly and newly appreciative of the world around you."—George Saunders There was a hot, high sun, a hard ground and a long way off to any certain water, and my wife, a tenderfoot, I thought, not immodest, seemed bent on ruined feet and spectacle, on making of herself to passing innocents a living proof of what could happen to a man and woman ventured too far off alone together in...