Burdens by Water

In a series of strangely resilient personal adventures–often beginning with breakups, and fueled by a sense of "invincible longing"–essayist Alan Rifkin flings himself at the last vestiges of the Southern California Dream. He chases summer with a pool man, lives with monks in a Santa Barbara monastery, joins a dysfunctional Los Angeles writing club, communes with wild dolphins, traces the steps of Otzi the Iceman, emulates a Bible-based marriage, and confronts his mother's last season in his beloved San Fernando Valley, in each case wrestling with mysteries of heaven and earth. By the time he looks up, he has waded deep into the complications of later life–compromised love, family tragedy, and what it might mean to be a grownup in the 21st century West.

Alan Rifkin is a former Details and L.A. Weekly contributing editor who has also written for Premiere, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, Black Clock and The Quarterly, ed. Gordon Lish. Of his first book, Signal Hill, the Los Angeles Times wrote, "[H]auntingly beautiful, the work of a gifted storyteller with a sharp eye and a tender heart," and Kirkus Reviews wrote, "Rifkin is what might have happened had Nathanael West lived on and been even more talented. . . Exquisite."