In her first collection of short stories, Marnell Jameson goes close to the heart, bringing us tender and sometimes painful looks at growing up and growing older, missed connections, things taken for granted, and other common threads of humanity. We experience the heartbreaking rift between husband and wife in the aftermath of their only child's death. We relive the impatient curiosity of two adolescent girls "eager to move on with life." And we sense the superficial emptiness of an upscale crowd that frequents a well-known shopping plaza. Like the California palms, all the stories reach far below the surface, only to rise singularly high above the lanscapt to offer perspectives not easily forgotten.