Testament — Moses L. Howard

The collected stories in Testament offer insight into the circumstances of others' lives -- sometimes humorous, often disturbing.A girl finds ecstasy surfing on a secondhand board, but her life is altered by chance encounters on a cold Pacific beach.An eager young fisherman is heartbroken by the Valdez spill.Teen-age children become adults too soon, forced to parent their own inadequate mothers and fathers.Young lives are bent by coincidences and misplaced trust -- a chance meeting, a found package, the fallout of others' drug problems.Friendships develop -- or endure -- beyond difficult obstacles.Ironic humor seeps through the arch back-and-forth in long-term marriages.These are stories with hopes for brilliant futures, for rebellious and creative people finding their way through the complexities and contradictions of modern America.