In this highly entertaining debut collection, Wells Tower conjures a world of semi-broken men and long-frustrated women. In these stories life is never easy, and victories are laden with portents of some inevitable reckoning.

In ‘The Brown Coast,’ a small footprint on the inside of a windshield reveals an infidelity, and a guilty husband is kicked out of his family’s home. ‘Retreat’ has two bickering brothers on a hunt that turns bizarrely wrong, their successes and failures laid bare. There is the young girl in ‘Wild America,’ who shares a few beers with a stranger and finds herself deep in the shadow of danger.

Tower’s characters are rendered with such acuity that an old wheelchair-bound man or a paedophile at the County Fair resonate with equal power and intrigue. The writing is so polished that the most violent, discomforting and bizarre events are utterly compelling. In the title story, we journey with a Viking on the plunder as he questions, in youthful American idiom (dude), whether it is time to settle down and leave all the killing behind. It is a highly accomplished feat of craft and imagination. I urge you to read it, laugh and weep.