A gifted, empathetic writer with a thing for epiphany over resolution, Reinhorn in her debut story collection, Big Cats rolls as steadily with young characters on the edge as she does with older ones doing their damnedest not to return to the edge. Each story slips into you from the get-go. Drama depends on folks with hurt, history and heartache. It's not about the earthquake at the bank but the employee's emotional paralysis; not about beasts roaming free at the zoo but the prickly egos of two girls chafing to mature in the absence of role models; not about the fragile vanity of a spiteful matriarch revealing family secrets but the act of charity those revelations inspire in her daughter.

Reinhorn's characters arrive already chastened by life. Burdened by grief, addiction, shame, or fear, they yearn for adulthood, sobriety, and love, transitions they don't know how to accomplish. If this is typical short-story fare for young American authors taking suburbia as their subject, Reinhorn writes with lyrical authority about her characters, and that's what counts. Despite comparisons to Raymond Carver and Denis Johnson, Reinhorn is not a rule-breaker but, instead, uses short-story convention to get bounce from the emotional ride of her characters. She's better compared to Charles Baxter and Lorrie Moore.

In the title story, a pair of fourteen-year-old "blood sisters" pair off for blood sport. Employed for a second summer at the Washington Park Zoo, the girls resume their best-friend relationship, but with Polly's declaration of sexual liberation ("'Last summer was for wishing,' Polly says. 'This summer is for fucking'"), their friendship slips ever so gently into cruel competition. Last summer they might have sunned topless, but this summer they're critically assessing themselves and their bodies. Brenda, the narrator, admires Polly's "nice wide hips" compared to her own, which are "narrow, like a giraffe's," but rates herself positively breast-wise compared to Polly's "bare-boy flatness on top." Polly catches Brenda staring, rages with self-consciousness, and, as quick as you can say "breast envy," retaliates by accusing Brenda of being a lesbian and by calling her mother names. All the secrets they shared as friends are now weapons they wield as rivals. With poetic precision, the story tracks the way two insecure young girls boast, bluff, tease, accuse and attack each other as they try to make sense of sexuality.

Give credit to Reinhorn for stories as well crafted as "Big Cats," but don't blame her for the book's cover or quotes. Despite the cover's literal leopard, her title story features lions. Flattery thunders from all skies: Marilynne Robinson, Barry Hannah, Dan Chaon, ZZ Packer, Siegfried & Roy (someone in marketing should be returned to the cage). Gore Vidal all but compares her to Mark Twain, for chrissakes. Because the publisher dressed her book in fake fur and pearls and dropped her off at the public pool, readers can't be faulted for expecting, when the fur drops, a Shakespearean supermodel with thong and thesaurus. Reinhorn, gratefully, speaks the language of boots and blue jeans, estrangement and mercy.