With Music Through the Floor, Pushcart Prize winner and former Wallace Stegner Fellow Eric Puchner makes an extraordinary debut: a collection of nine unforgettable stories – strikingly original, fiercely funny, and quietly heartbreaking – portraying a group of cultural misfits attempting to navigate mainstream America.

In “Children of God,” a young loner becomes the caretaker and companion for two mentally retarded men, seeking solace in their outsider status. “Essay #3: Leda and the Swan” is told in the forlorn, benighted, and tragically funny voice of a high school girl who longs more than anything to be loved. In the unsettling “Child’s Play,” Puchner explores the price of nonconformity by following a pack of boys wreaking havoc on Halloween. Writing from an impressive range of perspectives—men and women, children and adults, immigrants and tourists—Puchner deftly exposes the dark, tender undersides of his characters with arresting beauty and precision.