Call Up the Waters

Caron’s assured debut collection explores humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Throughout, the environment looms as both a comfort and a threat. “Bending the Map,” a standout, unspools with a strong sense of foreboding as a California woman turns to her neighbor for shelter after losing her cabin to a flood. In the title story, a man remembers the harsh drought that led his mother to start dowsing at their rural home in Colorado, a practice the narrator mocked by mimicking her in front of his friends. Despite this act of ridicule, he admits that as a child he feared his mother would bring about a catastrophic flood. “Shovelbums,” told through a series of vignettes, follows the lives of workers cataloging and preserving historic sites in Yuma, Ariz., and other places. In “What the Birds Knew,” another highlight, a man recounts taking his six-year-old daughter on a trip to Kauai from New England, despite her fever from an infection he neglects to treat, which results in hearing loss. These stories provide strong and varied impressions of characters on the margins. (July)