In the Country of the Young

Book excerpt: DIVDIV“An important and rewarding collection.” —Houston Chronicle/divDIV 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./divDIV 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./div/div