In the title story, a young man waiting in the Hotel Eden discovers -- as many others have -- that Eden is not a permanent domicile. In "Zanduce at Second", a baseball player turned kille by accident undergoes a surprising transformation. We root for escaped felon Ray in "A Note on the Type" and drive through the sweltering summer streets of Phoenix as a nineteen-year-old narrator goes through an unsettling sexual awakening in "Oxygen".

Carlson's work has always made a difference. Whether his characters are getting sabotaged by nightcaps or encountering nudists on a rafting trip, he takes us to a generous array of places in a new way.