The Collapsible World

Written in the tautest prose, this portrait of a family on the verge of collapse shimmers with the heat and dissipated fog of October in San Francisco.

Lillie returns home one night to discover that her mother has disappeared. She is left to care for her father, a drug-addicted anesthesiologist, with little support from her only sibling, a stripper at a North Beach nightclub. Fueled by alcohol and too-little sleep, she seeks comfort in the form of sex and target practice with an attractive cop. Her one true solace is the map store where she works with Finch, the man who was always there for her when her own family wasn't.

Grappling with the loss of her mother and her vexatious relationship with her father, Lillie navigates San Francisco's seedy underworld of sex for sale, drugs, and duplicity, in search of a grown-up life that might lie at the periphery.