On the Beach in Spanish Room by Janis Spence is a collection of six previously unpublished inter-connected contemporary short stories that follows the lives of a group of friends from early childhood through a rebellious and sometimes catastrophic young adulthood and on into an unsettled middle age. With a cast that includes Father Joe, who can no longer remember when he became a bishop, how he fell in love with a stray cat or whose child he gave away, to Spider LaPlante, tattoo artist and sometime drug dealer hired to do an unusual job, these stories are peopled with characters struggling to comprehend the cruel and funny vagaries of life and love.