Kirjahaku

Then We'd Be Happy is a tale of lower middle-class friends trying to fashion futures out of whatever opportunities they can find. Opportunities to make money. Opportunities to be together. Opportunities that fall apart. Opportunities that must be put back together, no matter what. The friends include a would-be chef, a flirtatious (and unfaithful) waitress, a single mother with a tattoo of Bart Simpson on her shoulder, and an easy-going young man who must make some hard choices. Living among the ones and zeros of California's Silicon Valley-the coders and big-bucks brainiacs-they band together to pay rent and enjoy whatever pleasures they can. Theirs is a story about fortune cookies, class warfare, disease-fighting neuropeptides, strawberry rhubarb pie, and what it will take to be happy.

College is a place and time in which we decide what and who we want to be. It's a time when we need new friends as never before (and perhaps never again, not with the same urgency). The combination of similarities and differences that bring Steve and Neil together makes it hard for them to either stay friends or simply go their separate ways. Each is unlike anyone the other has ever known. Steve is eccentric, slightly paranoid, and too perceptive for his own good. He knows the difference between what people say and what they do. Neil is reflective, sincere, and not as together as he seems. There's not much he's sure of anymore. They come to know each other very well and understand each other not at all.

On a chilly morning in Taos, New Mexico, a 17-year-old paperboy breaks the window of a 31-year-old hair stylist - an accident that marks the beginning of an instant, inexplicable bond between them. In the course of one high-desert summer, Joshua and Sabrina share confidences, intercede in each other's love lives, go on a date that scandalizes the town, and confront questions of fidelity, desire, and the nature of love.

The stories in Precarious are about doing the right thing and regretting it. About making bets and dancing naked. They play out in rain-soaked Seattle and drought-stricken California. On a tiny island and in a vast desert filled with light and heat and sand that slips through your fingers like friendships you once had. In prose that is by turns spare and lyrical, these stories capture the feeling of late summer. A never-ending game of Kick the Can. All sense of time lost among the stars.

This three-in-one volume contains the following novels: SABRINA'S WINDOW: On a chilly morning in Taos, New Mexico, a 17-year-old paperboy breaks the window of a 31-year-old hair stylist - an accident that marks the beginning of an instant, inexplicable bond between them. In the course of one high-desert summer, Joshua and Sabrina share confidences, intercede in each other's love lives, go on a date that scandalizes the town, and confront questions of fidelity, desire, and the nature of love. THE POSSIBILITY OF SNOW: This story traces a once promising friendship between college roommates in New England. Steve is eccentric, slightly paranoid, and too perceptive for his own good. He knows the difference between what people say and what they do. Neil is reflective, sincere, and not as together as he seems. There's not much he's sure of anymore. They know each other very well and understand each other not at all. THEN WE'D BE HAPPY: In this Silicon Valley tale, lower middle-class friends try to fashion futures out of whatever opportunities they can find. Opportunities to make money. Opportunities to be together. Opportunities that fall apart. Opportunities that must be put back together, no matter what.