Two years ago--at twenty-two--John McManus captivated writers and critics with his first story collection and became the youngest recipient of the Whiting Writers Award. Now McManus returns with a collection of stories equally piercing and visionary: stories about the young and old, compromised by circumstance and curiosity, and undergoing startling transformations. In “, Eastbound, ”, a car driven by two elderly sisters breaks down on an elevated highway: Beneath them lies the lost country of the South, overrun with concrete and shopping centers but still possessing the spectres and secrets of the past. In “, Brood, ”, a plucky young heroine moves with her mother into the home of the mother’, s online boyfriend: She will use the" Audubon Guide to Birds, " and her own wits to survive the advances of the boyfriend’, s teenaged son. In “, Cowry, ”, two backpackers in New Zealand race to witness the first sunrise of the twenty-first century.