My notes as I read this book: manhood/boyhood, fear/love, inevitability, loss and yearning and paralysis, hope-but-don’t-let-hope-get-you, glimpses of abuse and family (which is how you remember trauma, in pieces, non-chronologically), wild beautiful creature, survival looks like many things, stay/go/live/die, whiteboys have options, maybe this time.

Washington gives us a gift with this collection of interrelated stories set in QPOC Houston. This is some of the best writing I’ve experienced in years. Short stories are often intriguing but rarely feel whole. Washington shows the fullness of story and character that can be achieved in a short few pages. Every one was great and some just phenomenal. I’m an impatient reader, but each story here made me put the book down, sip my coffee, and *think* for a while before I continued on. It’s definitely in my top 3 for 2019.

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