OUT OF VIEW is a collection of stories set in the American Southwest about people coping with loss—the death of parents, children, ideals, innocence. The characters in this collection reap or resist lessons of life as they struggle to find their place in the world. In “First Rain,” 15-year-old Tessie struggles with the loss of her father and the demands of her mother as she navigates the rocky terrain of adolescence. In “Monsters,” middle-aged Maury has to choose between a new relationship and protecting the well-being of his 4-year-old ‘daughter.’ The stories are influenced by the Western realism of Maile Meloy and the playful plotting of Ron Carlson. These stories are inspired both by the Sonoran Desert—expansive, sun-soaked, unrepentant—and by the people who live, love, and lose in the interstices between Manifest Destiny and the Reconquista.

This thesis approaches the issue of the detective in the 21st century through the parodic novella form. The main body of the work is a piece of fiction about an amateur detective trying to find a solution to an imagined crime. This comes from my study of detective fiction, starting with Oedipus and ending with twentieth and twenty-first century examples, especially in the works of Thomas Pynchon and Chester Himes, where the detective loses power. The novella follows Whitney Sloat as he acts as detective in a world that can’t let go of the hardboiled traditions. He and the people around him struggle to connect with reality, pursuing a way of life that cannot exist outside of their world.