Adam Klein?s debut fiction, The Medicine Burns, is a collection of stories linked by a central voice that is at once precise, touching and brutal. In ?Club Feet? a mother and son are inexorably bound by this inherited physical deformity; in the title story ?The Medicine Burns? a gay adolescent tyrannized by acne turns vengeful after failing in his struggle to be loved; in ?India? a young man with AIDS, unable to connect with everyday life, takes an exotic adventure. These stories brim with boys and men who do not fit in, shedding new light on the outsider in our society.