This dazzling debut collection from a Seattle native features stories evocatively set along the Northwest coast, stories of quiet but astonishing lives. Here are ferry workers, carpenters, park rangers, living alongside crab factories, cranberry bogs, the misty ocean. Here are people puzzled by the processes of growing up, leaving home, parenting, aging. Here are people who realize there are second chances, that from illness can come hope, that from family can come a greater sense of self. Psychologically complex and glowing with warmth, these rich stories recall Tobias Wolff and Raymond Carver. A MARINER PAPERBACK ORIGINAL.
Michael Byers' new novel about the discovery of Pluto, Percival's Planet, has been called "a towering achievement" by the Times of London. His first book, The Coast of Good Intentions, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, won the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and garnered a Whiting Writer's Award. Long for This World won the annual fiction prize from Friends of American Writers and was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Both were New York Times Notable Books.
Byers' fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards; his nonfiction has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Best American Travel Writing, and elsewhere. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, he teaches creative writing at the University of Michigan.
Percival's Planet is published by Picador UK as The Unfixed Stars.
