We Drove Out to the Desert

THE CHARACTERS in Scott Burr's new collection are all standing at thresholds they don't know exist. In the titular story, recent college graduates and co-workers Samantha and Bryce head off into the Southern California desert to drink ayahuasca tea and find the Truth of the universe; what they find instead is a raving hitchhiker, a family in crisis, an abandoned dog, and a washed-up movie star living out his worst B-movie nightmare. Still, Truth comes in many forms… In The Night I Gave Darrell a Ride, Zeke and Darrell have been best friends forever, so when Darrell says he needs a ride somewhere in the middle of the night Zeke doesn’t ask questions. It’s probably safe to assume, though, that Zeke wasn’t expecting this trip to involve an armed standoff at the cultish commune out on the edge of town. In Rifle, dinner with friends brings up questions about the future—and the present—for the narrator and his longtime girlfriend. In Jinx, college freshman Christopher is taking a Greyhound from L.A. to San Francisco to see his girlfriend. They’ve decided to stay together despite going to different schools, but now he feels like she’s drifting away—and the guy riding in the next seat over has plenty to say about it. Finally, the narrator of We Were Still in the Bar and his friend Johnny can’t imagine what happened to Parker’s badly scarred face, and Parker won’t tell them. By the time he’s back from serving overseas, the narrator can guess. What do you do when the pain from a new tattoo, bad heartburn, and maybe something else conspire to keep you up at night? Sometimes it’s better to not ask the questions to which you don't want the answers…