Extinction Capital of the World

Rigg’s promising debut collection focuses on the intertwined lives of Hawaiian characters navigating family turmoil and the impacts of imperialism. The excellent opener, “Target Island,” concerns a geologist named Harrison who begins working for the U.S. Navy in the early 1990s to recover unexploded ordnance on the island of Kaho‘olawe, which the military had used as a testing site for decades. He’d protested the tests for years, in part because of injuries sustained in a 1948 blast by his parents, who were living in nearby Maui at the time. Harrison’s son narrates “Field Dressing,” set in the 2000s shortly after Harrison’s death from cancer. In it, the son goes on a drunken fishing trip with his childhood friend, Max, and both men discuss their marital problems. A younger Max reappears in “After Ivan,” as he and his twin brother, Mason, compete as kayakers in Cuba and Miami in 1989, hoping to qualify for the world championship in Poland. Rigg explores mortality with a mix of kitchen-sink realism—as when Harrison’s drunk and grief-stricken son shoves his wife after his father’s funeral—and stylistic flourishes such as the recurring marking of time (“Forty-one years before his granddaughter is born, Harrison sees his first picture of Kaho’olawe”). These sad but vivid stories radiate with intelligence. Agent: Amy Bishop-Wycisk, Trellis Literary Management. (Aug.)