Desert Boys: Fiction, Paperback

This series of powerful, intertwining stories illuminates Daley Kushner's world--the family, friends, and community that have bothformed and constrained him, and his new life in San Francisco. Back home, the desert preys on those who cannot conform: an alfalfa farmer on the outskirts oftown; two young girls whose curiosity leads to danger; a black politician whoonce served as his school's confederate mascot; Daley's mother, an immigrantfrom Armenia; and Daley himself, introspective and queer. Meanwhile, in anotherdesert on the other side of the world, war threatens to fracture Daley's most meaningful--and most fraught--connection to home, his friendship with Robert Karinger.

A luminous debut, Desert Boys by Chris McCormick traces the development of towns into cities, of boys into men, and the haunting effects produced when the two transformations overlap. Both a bildungsroman and a portrait of a changing place, the book mines the terrain between the desire toescape and the hunger to belong.