Through thrilling prose and fearless scenes, Johnson shows that Christian power-lifters and depressed robots are no more surreal than fathers who vanish or mothers who waste away.

An ATF raid, a moonshot gone wrong, a busload of female cancer victims determined to live life to the fullest—these are the compelling terrains Adam Johnson explores in his electrifying debut collection. A lovesick teenage Cajun girl, a gay Canadian astrophysicist, a teenage sniper on the LAPD payroll, a post-apocalyptic bulletproof-vest salesman—each seeks connection and meaning in landscapes made uncertain by the voids that parents and lovers should fill. With imaginative grace and verbal acuity, Johnson is satirical without being cold, clever without being cloying, and heartbreaking without being sentimental. He shreds the veneer of our media-saturated, self-help society, revealing the lonely isolation that binds us all together.

Adam Johnson, a former Wallace Stegner Fellow, teaches at Stanford University. His fiction has appeared in such publications as “Esquire” and “Harpers,” as well as “Best New American Fiction” four years running (a record).