Nothing Looks Familiar

In Shawn Syms's debut story collection, characters from a wide swath of society chart paths from places of danger or unhappiness into the great unknown, each grappling with a central question: if you fight to change your circumstances, is it be possible to reconfigure your very identity? From bullied kids to meth-smoking mothers, characters in dire straits take measures?sometimes drastic ones?to take charge of their own fates. In these richly drawn, deeply nuanced stories, nothing may look familiar, but everything is up for grabs. Shawn Syms is an author and journalist who has written for fifty-plus publications over twenty-five years.