The stories in WHAT BURNS examine the extremes of desire against a backdrop of family, class and mortality. In “Bliss,” a young man befriends the convicted felon who murdered his mother when he was only a child. In “Not Even Camping Is Like Camping Anymore,” a teenage boy fends off the advances of a five-year-old his mother babysits. And in “Dues,” a man discovers that everything he owns is borrowed from someone else --- including his time on earth. Dale Peck’s first collection of short fiction walks the tightrope between tenderness and violence that has defined his work since the publication of his debut novel, MARTIN AND JOHN, through his most recent, NIGHT SOIL.

A century and a half of family secrets are written on Judas Stammers’ body, painted purple by a birthmark that covers half his face and abdomen. Judas is the last descendant of a 19th-century robber baron who made his fortune off the slaves who died in his coal mines. The money is gone, but the legacy lives on in the form of an all-male, all-black private school founded by the family patriarch in atonement for his sins. Ostracized for his name as much as his appearance, Judas’ lust for his classmates is matched only by their contempt for him, until finally he’s driven to seek out sex in places where his identity means nothing to the anonymous men he gives himself to. Hovering over everything is Judas’ mother, Dixie, an acclaimed potter whose obsession with creating the perfect vessel over and over again leaves her son that much more isolated.