Foreword / Robert Atwan --
Introduction / Cheryl Strayed --
Free rent at the tolitalitatian hotel from Sun / Poe Ballantine --
Night from Granta / Alice Munro --
Sometimes a romantic notion from Gettysburg review / Richard Schmitt --
Highway of lost girls from GQ / Vanessa Veselka --
Keeper of the flame from New England review / Matthew Vollmer --
Breeds of America from Harper's magazine / William Melvin Kelley --
My father's women from Missouri review / Mako Yoshikawa --
Confessions of an ex-Mormon from New republic / Walter Kirn --
I'm jumping off the bridge from Salon.com / Kevin Sampsell --
Pigeons from Prairie schooner / Eileen Pollack --
Triage from River teeth / Jon Kerstetter --
The art of being born from Hotel Amerika / Marcia Aldrich --
What happens in hell from Ploughshares / Charles Baxter --
The exhibit will be so marked from Normal school / Ander Monson --
The girls in my town from Southwest review / Angela Morales --
Some notes on attunement from New Yorker / Zadie Smith --
His last game from Notre Dame magazine / Brian Doyle --
When they let them bleed from Hobart / Tod Goldberg --
Field notes on hair from South Loop review / Vicki Weiqi Yang --
Letter from Majorca from Paris review / J.D. Daniels --
Ghost estates from New York times magazine / John Jeremiah Sullivan --
Channel B from Rumpus / Megan Stielstra --
A little bit of fun before he died from ZYZZYVA / Dagoberto Gilb --
Epilogue: Deadkidistan from McSweeney's / Michelle Mirsky --
El Camino Doloroso from Paris review / David Searcy --
The book of knowledge from River teeth / Steven Harvey --
