World Gone Water enlarges the portrait of Charlie Martens, first introduced in Vernon Downs, a young man grappling with how to navigate the world. Set in Phoenix, seven years before the events of Vernon Downs, Charlie finds himself released from a voluntary stay at a behavioral clinic in the Sonoran desert, the result of an incident with a woman he met while tending bar in Florida where Charlie had fled to forget his high school sweetheart, whose sudden marriage to someone else devastates him. But Charlie's homecoming launches him into a chain of events with a cast of characters that assault his fragile state and further undermine his general impressions about life and how to live. World Gone Water roves the deep terrain of our want for emotional connection and is a devastating narrative about love, sex, and friendship. Charlie Martens is my favorite kind of narrator, an obsessive yearner whose commitment to his worldview is so overwhelming that the distance between his words and the reader's usual thinking gets clouded fast. World Gone Water will draw you in, make you complicit, and finally leave you both discomfited and thrilled.