The Middle of Elsewhere — Alison Moore

There is no map of The Middle of Elsewhere. It's a territory bordered by Far Left Field and Off the Beaten Track, both in exterior and interior ways. The collection begins with a middle-aged couple venturing forth to reclaim their lost youth in the ghost town of Terlingua, Far West Texas. The book continues with a woman in the Ozarks building a doll-house shrine to Elvis as a hedge against time. A woman snakehandler in the Trans-Pecos faces her demons the hard way. A visionary half-breed boy in Nussa Tengarra, Indonesia, commits a sin that brings the wrath of a whale upon his village. A young woman in San Francisco accidentally kills a bicyclist from El Salvador and goes on a journey to learn about him. A musician buries his guitar and his brother in the Mojave Desert. A young chambermaid leaves a letter to the people of the future in a time capsule in Arkansas. The book comes full circle back to Texas with two children riding an Orphan Train past the point of no return.