K. L. Cook’s debut collection of linked stories spans three generations in the life of one West Texas family. Events both tender and tragic lead to a strange and lovely vision of a world stitched together in tenuous ways as the characters struggle to make sense of their lives amid the shifting boundaries of marriage, family, class, and culture.A series of unusual incidents—a daughter’s elopement, a sobering holiday trip, a vicious attack by the family dog, a lightning strike—provokes a mother of five to abandon her children. An oil rigger, inspired by sun-induced hallucinations, rescues his estranged wife, who doesn’t appreciate his chivalry. In the wake of his father’s and brother’s deaths, a teenage boy finds a precarious solace working with his mother at a country-western bar. A cosmetics salesman schemes to buy Costa Rica and flirts dangerously with mobsters in Las Vegas. A woman fleeing her fourth marriage arrives at a complicated understanding of love and responsibility.Railroad worker and conman, grieving son and battered wife—these characters explore the limits of family fragility and resilience. Their stories—suggesting unlikely connections between comedy and pathos, cruelty and generosity—promise a hard-won dignity and hope.

K. L. Cook teaches creative writing and literature at Prescott College in Arizona, where he also serves as the associate dean. His fiction, poetry, and essays have been published in journals including the Threepenny Review, American Short Fiction, Witness, and Shenandoah. Last Call is a collection of connected stories focusing on one Texas family--unlucky men and women who drink, fight, and love their way through disaster. While these stories deal with broken relationships and pain, they speak of our capacity to move forward through life's hardships.Narrated by different characters and set in Texas, Las Vegas, and Costa Rica, these moving stories promise a gritty, hard hope.