Jesus' son

Told by a nameless drifter who is known only by a crude nickname, these linked stories follow him through a haze of drugs, alcohol and near-misses in the Midwest of the 1970s. The pieces move between hitchhiking rides, a hospital job and a stint in a rehabilitation home, and each one is a fragment of a life lived mostly on the edge of disaster.

The collection opens with "Car Crash While Hitchhiking" and continues through "Two Men Out on Bail," "Dundun," "Work," "Emergency," "Dirty Wedding," "The Other Man," "Happy Hour," "Steady Hands at Seattle General" and "Beverly Home." Johnson, a poet and novelist, writes in short, sharply observed scenes that stay close to the narrator's fractured, dreamlike perception of the people and places he passes through.

Beneath the chaos, the book is concerned with loneliness, faith and the fragile hope of people trying to stay afloat. Readers drawn to bleak, lyrical American fiction about addiction and the search for grace may find it especially striking. The stories were later adapted into a 1999 film starring Billy Crudup.