My Chaos Theory — Steve Watkins

The dozen stories in Steve Watkins's first book of fiction are funny, and odd, and resonant with clues to the secret ways of men and boys. In settings ranging from the dark underbelly of the Deep South and Texas to New York and beyond this country to Kenya and India, the stories all deal with young and not-so-young men coming of age. Three brainy kids plot to murder a captive elephant at a roadside zoo in Florida. An angry dad in South Georgia takes his daughter's boyfriend up in a small plane to torture him by doing aerobatics. A failed American social activist seeks enlightenment in an ashram in India, and nearly kills himself by fasting and giving his food to a pair of starving children who end up stealing from him. A widower finds a drowned man washed up on a beach at Fire Island and folds the dead man's body into a yoga pose.