In the thirteen stories of Barkley's debut collection, characters are haunted by memory and missed chances, buoyed by humor and a fragile optimism. In "Under Water," a man whose job keeps him buried beneath the waters of the Chesapeake reassures his wife that their lives have meaning despite living in a world fraught with imminent danger. In the title story, two people living out their ruined marriage at an abandoned drive-in theater are offered a fresh chance at life with the arrival of two unlikely characters. "Escaping," set in turn-of-the-century Baltimore, depicts a young nurse from a typhoid ward in a life-changing chance encounter with Houdini. Circle View is very much a man's book--the sort of collection in which a son's complicated feelings about his father and an older man's feeling about his impotence can both be tactfully explored. . . . [T]hese stories showcase the substantial skill of a young writer who has chosen an ambitious subject--nothing less than life's strange turns. -- The New York Times Book Review, Maureen Picard Robins BRAD BARKLEY, a North Carolina native, has twice had stories nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His fiction has appeared in such publications as The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Georgia Review, The Florida Review, and The Greensboro Review. He lives with his wife and their two children in Wilmington, North Carolina, where he teaches at Cape Fear Community College.