The burning ground

The Burning Ground is a collection of eight stories set across California, from remote, sun-baked towns to the restless energy of Venice Beach. In this landscape, beauty and bleakness sit side by side, and the men who move through it are haunted by their pasts and by their dreams.

In "A Thunderstorm in Santa Monica," a man's unsettled way of life is thrown back at him after a long flight. In "Black Bear in the Snow," a divorced advertising executive tries to rebuild his relationship with his son. In the title story, a painter cannot shake memories of a former lover.

The characters begin as familiar types: the deadbeat dad, the drifting divorcé, the wayward man. The stories give them emotional depth and peel back their layers to show inner lives that are complex and often surprising.

With a poet's lyricism and an outsider's sharp eye, Adam O'Riordan portrays a range of male lives as they come to terms with what the West Coast promises.