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 to his childhood home. In “Too Bad about Howie,” a divorced poet finds comfort in stolen moments with his ex-wife’s dog. Despite their longing for connection, these characters are victims of their own foibles, trapped in terrifying moments of psychic violence that risk driving away the very people they love.

Stacy Tintocalis has published fiction and nonfiction in journals such as Crazyhorse, Cream City Review, and the Wilshire Review. Stories from her collection have won The Journal’s Annual Fiction Prize and Santa Clara Review’s Editor’s Choice Prize. She currently resides in Mountain View, Missouri.