The stories in I’m Here dramatize life in the Alaskan interior, describing the difficult lives of people in Fairbanks, Alaska as they move through the long, brilliant days of summer into the deep winter months. These are characters living on the tenuous edge of things—on the economic edge caused by poverty and disillusion, on the dividing line between outsider and insider, and on the literal edge of the Alaskan wilderness. The stories in this collection move from beauty to danger and back again with decisive grace, although the lingering effect is not shock, but empathy toward people simultaneously alien and oddly familiar.

David Nikki Crouse’s work has always explored the mysteries of identity, and these remarkably rendered stories double down on that subject by focusing on the self-mythology of people living in Fairbanks, Alaska, merging the hard exterior world of the Alaskan wilderness with its inhabitants’ complicated interior landscapes.