Moving from remote, sun-scorched towns to the charged hum of Venice Beach boardwalk at sunset, The Burning Ground explores the fragmented lives of those living in and around America's West Coast, a place of stasis and heat, a contrast of neon glow and desert vastness. ..An English artist finds peace in exile after the disintegration of an affair; a frequent flyer forges a bond with a fellow traveller while visiting his long distance lover in Los Angeles; a young boy interviews a big city business man for his school newspaper, and finds himself returning to this man repeatedly over the course of their lives; the foreman of a desert building project embarks on a road trip along the Pacific Coast Highway into California's underworld when his boss's daughter disappears; an old man witnesses his wife's slow fade towards death, releasing a memory of an incident that destabilises the very foundation of his marriage; and a divorced father tries to reconnect with his son on a hunting trip deep in the mountains of Montana...Written with a poet's lyricism and an outsider's keen eye, this remarkable collection paints an intimate portrait of complex and diverse male lives, in a work of unexpected beauty and emotional poignancy.
