In WILD FAILURE, characters encounter feelings of shame, desire, attachment and disconnection as they find themselves navigating their way through bad decisions, unusual situations and fraught relationships. In “Oh, El,” a dominant woman can’t stop herself from toying with the tender heart of her co-worker. The title story, “Wild Failure,” is a doomed love story between an agoraphobic and a wilderness hiker. In “Half Pipe,” a teen girl’s heterosexual ambivalence results in chaos at a skate park. A group of idealistic roommates find themselves the subject of a true crime podcast in “Murder at the Elm Street Collective House.” In “The Sex Castle Lunch Buffet,” a woman reflects on her brief stint at a ’90s strip club after she learns of the death of a former client.

After the death of her wife, Shelby is suffering from prolonged grief. In a grief support group, she meets Cammie, who gives her permission to express her most hopeless, hideous feelings. Cammie is charismatic and unlike anyone Shelby has ever met. She’s also recovering from cancer and going through several other calamities. Shelby puts all her energy into helping Cammie thrive --- until her intuition tells her that something isn’t right. Gibson is fresh from divorce and deeply depressed. Then he falls in love with Cammie. But his friends are wary of her. When Gibson and Shelby meet, they realize Cammie’s stories don’t always add up. In fact, they’re far from the truth. But what kind of a person would lie about having cancer? And what does it say about Shelby and Gibson that they fell for it?

It’s 1997, and Missy is a cellist in an indie rock band on tour across America. She plays the song about her absent mother that made the band famous. But then she meets a tomboy drummer who is hard to forget, and a forgotten flap of cocaine strands her at the border. Fortysomething Carola is just surfacing from a sex scandal at the yoga center where she has been living when she sees her daughter, Missy, for the first time in 10 years --- on the cover of a music magazine. Ruth is 83 and planning her return to the Turkish seaside village where she spent her childhood. But when her granddaughter, Missy, winds up crashing at her house, she decides it’s time that the strong and stubborn women in her family find a way to understand one another again.

George Woodbury, a beloved science teacher at a prep school, has been charged with sexual misconduct with students from his daughter’s school. As he sits in prison awaiting trial and claiming innocence, his wife Joan vaults between denial and rage as friends and neighbors turn cold. Their daughter, 17-year-old Sadie, is a popular high school senior who becomes a social outcast --- and finds refuge in an unexpected place. Her brother Andrew, a lawyer in New York, returns home to support the family, only to confront unhappy memories from his past. A writer tries to exploit their story, while an unlikely men’s rights activist group attempts to recruit Sadie for their cause.