The Loss of Leon Meed

In Josh Emmons's inventive and utterly engaging debut ten residents of Eureka California are brought together by a mysterious man Leon Meed who repeatedly and inexplicably appears -- in the ocean at a local rock music club clinging to the roof of a barreling truck standing in the middle of Main Street's oncoming traffic -- and then as if by magic disappears. Young and old married and single punk and evangelical black white and Korean each witness to these bewildering events interprets them differently yet all of their lives are changed -- by the phenomenon itself and by what it provokes in them. And whether they in turn stagger toward love or heartbreakingly dissolve it Emmons's portrayal of their stories is strikingly real and emotionally affecting.