I liked Holiday Reinhorn’s debut short story collection, Big Cats, so much that for three weeks after I finished reading it, I drove aimlessly through the desert outside of Las Vegas, through Arizona and New Mexico, and across most of western Texas. I filled my trunk with copies of Big Cats. I spent my days carefully cutting Reinhorn’s stories from the books, enclosing them in Ziploc freezer bags, and burying them in shallow holes.

If short stories are seeds, Big Cats contains thirteen seeds that will sprout from the cracked earth and ripen into gorgeous Saguaro cacti. Reinhorn’s stories are spongy, prickly things that share a kinship with those planted by readers of Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff. Like these writers, she photographically renders a bloody-hearted world full of delicate people who need to be held in the palm of your hand.

To read the rest of this piece, please purchase this issue of the Believer online or at your local bookseller.

—Ryan Bartelmay