Rothbart, the creator of Found magazine, self-published five of the eight stories included here under the same title. This new collection should give him the wider attention he deserves, for his stories contain an immediacy and freshness that make them instantly engaging. The stories' strength lies in their narrators, young men who are rootless, restless, and full of heart, displaying humor and sweetness even in dire situations. The young couple in the title story are newly in love and zooming across the back roads of Kansas when they espy a young boy practicing his surfing moves in a cornfield. Drawn into a family drama surrounding the surfer's fatally ill sister, the narrator is moved to remark that "the world had never seemed so beautiful and devastating, so ordinary and broken-down." Such small epiphanies are the hallmark of the collection, which also includes magical portraits of a charismatic, outrageous liar and a lonely teen transformed by the kindness of a stranger whom he victimized. Joanne Wilkinson

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