Part the Hawser, Limn the Sea — Dan Lopez

Five fascinating tales linked by the sea. An aging architect must decide to give up his grief, even if it means losing the vestiges of a lover's memory. An object of fixation galvanizes men against the isolation of exile on a cruise liner. As he watches the disintegration of his picket-fence fantasy, an ex-soldier looks to the sea for absolution. By turns urban and remote, the emotional landscapes navigated in this stunning debut collection offer a bold new meditation on love, loss, and isolation in our precarious present, and make visceral for us the duality of risk and salvation that attend our most passionate attachments.