Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned: Stories

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE

Viking marauders descend on a much-plundered island, hoping some mayhem will shake off the winter blahs. A man is booted out of his home after his wife discovers that the print of a bare foot on the inside of his car's windshield doesn't match her own. Teenage cousins, drugged by summer, meet with a reckoning in the woods. A boy runs off to the carnival after his stepfather bites him in a brawl.

Wells Tower's version of America is touched with the seamy splendor of the dropout, the misfit: failed inventors, boozy dreamers, hapless fathers, wayward sons. With electric prose and savage wit, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is a profound new collection of stories.

The brown coast --
Retreat --
Executors of important energies --
Down through the valley --
Leopard --
Door in your eye --
Wild America --
On the show --
Everything ravaged, everything burned