Between Here and the Yellow Sea

by Nic Pizzolatto

A debut collection of short fiction from this National Magazine Award in Fiction finalist. Set in a variety of Southern and Midwestern landscapes—from Missouri’s Ha Ha Tonka State Park to a crop circle at a Minnesotan farm—the stories in Between Here and the Yellow Sea excavate the ambiguous terrain of the human heart. With a forceful and compassionate voice, Pizzolatto finds beauty in loneliness as his characters attempt to bridge the gulfs between themselves and others, past and present, and, sometimes, between their inner and outer selves. In this both heartbreaking and humorous collection, we meet a base-jumping, samurai park ranger who parachutes off the St. Louis Arch; a stained glass artist who struggles over his masterpiece and learns through great loss what his true subject will be; and a religious elementary school teacher who tries to understand her rebellious, militant son. In the title story, which first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, an orphaned young man and his forme