The spot : stories
(Book)

First published: 2010.

13 nuanced tales of wanderlust and transgression. Hoboes around a campfire spin elaborate yarns in two of the richest stories, offering just enough confession to keep the others' interest: The Blade finds an improbable friendship between an old geezer and a young junkie, culminating in a requisite blade-to-the-throat story; while The Junction pursues a vagrant who begs food at a farmhouse that is strikingly similar to the home he grew up in. The American landscape is vividly sketched in these tales, traversed by the Bonnie-and-Clyde meets Charles Starkweather team of young bank robbers in Nebraska, and the manipulative con man of Oklahoma. Similarly, the title story details a jaunty pimp's shameless exploitation of a girl with a horrific past, culminating in a grim discovery at Niagara Falls.