We Live in Water: Stories

From New York Times bestselling author, the first collection of short fiction from Jess Walter a suite of diverse and searching stories about personal struggle and diminished dreams, all of them marked by the wry wit, keen eye, and generosity of spirit that has made him a bookseller and reader favorite

Stories in We Live in Water range from comic tales of love to social satire and suspenseful crime fiction. Traveling from hip Portland to once-hip Seattle to never-hip Spokane, to a condemned casino in Las Vegas and a bottomless lake in the dark woods of Idaho, this is a world of lost fathers and redemptive con men, of personal struggles and diminished dreams.

In title story We Live in Water , a lawyer returns to his corrupt hometown to find his father, who disappeared 30 years earlier. In Thief, a blue-collar worker turns unlikely detective to find out which of his kids is stealing from the family fund.

Anything Helps sees a homeless man try to raise money to buy his son the new Harry Potter book; and in Virgo, a newspaper editor attempts to get back at his superstitious ex-girlfriend by screwing with her horoscope.

Also included are Don t Eat Cat and Statistical Abstract of My Hometown, Spokane, Washington, both of which achieved cult status after their first publication online.