From the author of Gillis Huckabee comes Sean Conway’s powerful first collection of short stories. In storySouth Magazine’s Million Writer’s Award-nominated “Scratch,” a divorced man tries to control a raging breakout of poison ivy while his personal life erupts violently out of control. In “Ashes, Ashes” an unemployed laborer is unable to look forward, so consumed by his role in devastating events of the past. And in “January Thaw” a single mother struggles to let go of the life she once envisioned for the uncharted path of her present when her recently-widowed father moves in with her and her young son.

Despite its title, The Slowpoke’s Guide to Getting It Right is not, in fact, a guide. It is not a how-to book. If anything, these stories combine to form a how-not-to guide. Sean Conway’s characters distract themselves from facing truths; they blame others for their own tragic decisions; they find themselves suddenly unprepared, face-to-face with life situations that they should have seen coming a mile away, but, like many of us, missed. Like many of us-perhaps even all of us-they’re slowpokes.