Two long-distance runners race a cargo train through the darkness of a rat-infested tunnel beneath the Detroit River. A drug store bicycle courier crosses a forbidden threshold in an attempt to save a life and a young swimmer conquers her fear of water only to discover she’s caught in far more dangerous currents. An autoworker who loses his family in a car accident tries to separate his life from the internal combustion engine forever.

Light Lifting, Alexander MacLeod’s long-awaited first collection of short stories, offers us a suite of darkly urban and unflinching elegies for a city and community on the brink. These are stories of work and its bonds, of tragedy and tragedy barely averted, but also of love and beauty and fragile understanding.

Cover image adapted from a photo by jrschau.