A wounded Vietnam veteran builds a guitar as a first step toward rebuilding his life. A young man is ejected from the foster system and hitchhikes his way across America in search of that elusive feeling of home. An unsatisfied twenty-something questions her relationships and imagines other possibilities. A single father struggles to come to terms with his daughter’s growing up. A street musician touches people with her words and her music.

Morris by Chris Kuell is a collection of fourteen powerful stories brimming with evocative landscapes and memorable characters. Navigating desire, despair, healing, and love—the residents of this collection are all searching to better understand themselves. Woven together through the universal thread of music, these stories, witnessed by a well-worn guitar, expose insecurities and highlight the power of endurance and personal transformation.

Kuell’s stories are gifts for the reader, the best of them tinged with familiar aches that are not quite nostalgia but more like laments for the endless ways life is more difficult than it needs to be.

— Geoffrey C. Fuller, author of the NYT bestseller Pretty Little Killers