<p>The Angelenos in each of these four original short stories embark on journeys that turn out to be metaphoric as well as literal. In "Mulholland Drive," the ten-year-old narrator accompanies her father and her two sisters on an out-of-the-ordinary Sunday drive that dramatizes the clash of their various reactions to the death of the girls' mother. A clash of personalities also plays a part in "The Elvis Motel," in which two childhood friends, recent college graduates, drive north together from Los Angeles; each ultimately arrives at an unexpected psychic state. Next, a couple in their mid-twenties journeys cross-country to "Gordon Kemp's Apartment" in New York City, where the geographical change initiates a rift between them. Finally, the thirty-three-year-old narrator of "A Handful" takes a drive in order to re-examine her role as both a mother and a daughter.</p>