These stunning stories, steeped in dark humor, startle and dismay, introduce us to a cast of eccentric and wholly believable characters.

Unexpected encounters confine and define the lives of strangers, while parents and partners navigate blended families and modern love. An older woman tells her waitress that she once left a newborn on church steps. A motel housekeeper makes a radical proposal to a guest. A teenager grapples with atheism and grief and eBay. A mother’s world is disrupted and recharged after a neighborhood man gives her young daughter a telescope.

Strange, heartfelt, sly and wryly funny, Sarah Braunstein’s stories ask us to confront the ways we try to make sense of our lives --- and what happens when we escape from these preconceptions.