Migrants, immigrants, travelers, and holidaymakers populate the 11 stories that comprise this collection from one of the most respected young Welsh writers. These vignettes focus on lives lived on either side of boundaries and on the fringes of society, and teem with characters whose dreams, yearnings, and regrets are at once unique and universal. Orthodox Jewish teenager Levi, having been caught with pornography, is sent from Brooklyn to a reform school in Israel, where his pious existence is threatened by the nymphomaniac Tzippy, a resident of a nearby psychiatric hospital. Lonely seven-year-old, third-generation Northern Irish-Italian Majella finds solace in her collection of Barbie dolls when her father is murdered by terrorists and her mother is crippled by grief. East German opera aficionado Silke faces a life-changing decision when she wakes to find her American lover stranded on the opposite side of an impenetrable but hastily thrown-up wall. Deep tragedy meets sharp comedy as children come of age and adults come to terms in these unforgettable stories.

Rachel Trezise is a former writer-in-residence at the University of Texas and the author of the novels Dial M for Merthyr, which won the inaugural Max Boyce Prize in 2010, In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl, and Sixteen Shades of Crazy. Her short story collection Fresh Apples won the inaugural Dylan Thomas Prize in 2006.