Here Is What You Do

Dennis pries into difficult moments that create pain but also new opportunities for the characters of his arresting, notable debut. In the title story, a man is sent to prison for drug trafficking; there, he forms a compassionate but also violent relationship with his cellmate. In “The Book-Eating Ceremony,” a lesbian academic in Kentucky deals with the impending death of her partner, the death of her mother, and how identity becomes entwined with self-image and one’s own physicality. “In Motel Rooms” enters the mind of Coretta Scott King and considers how she might have reacted to the pressures of intense surveillance. Dennis’s characters are all flawed and self-aware, and they tend to push themselves to change in strange ways. In the standout “Nettles,” a couple buys a meat processing facility, only for its religious former owners to begin sabotaging them when they realize the new owners might be atheists. Another highlight, “This Is a Galaxy,” follows a son of Turkish immigrants, who has a rocky final year of high school in Detroit after his home his robbed. Dennis’s resilient characters show fortitude in the midst of trauma and failure, and there’s a surprising strain of optimism that runs through these often stark stories. [em](June) [/em]