Jaguar Temple — Julie Keith

In Julie Keith's assured and accomplished debut collection, The Jaguar Temple, travel means change and liberation. But travel is also danger, whether it's a journey into an uncertain future or a return to an escaped past. In Hong Kong we plunge into the world of the corporate wife whose marriage has been in trouble longer than she cares to admit. In the jungles of Mexico, machine-gun fire punctuates the speeches of politicians anxious to impress foreign investors. Along the way we stop in Geneva, Boston and Montreal, where other characters find themselves stepping beyond the familiar and abandoning the borders of propriety.