Malia needs to leave El Salvador. A surfer and aspiring engineer, she came to Central America as a Peace Corps volunteer and fell in love with Ben. Malia's past year has been perfect: her weeks spent building a much-needed aqueduct in the countryside, and her weekends spent with Ben, surfing point-breaks in the nearby port city of La Libertad. Suddenly, a major earthquake devastates the country and brings an abrupt end to her work. Ben and Malia decide to move on.

Now free of obligations, they have an old car, a wad of cash, surfboards, and rough plans for an epic trip through South America. Just as they're about to say goodbye to their gritty and beloved Salvadoran beach town, a mysterious American surfer known only as Pelochucho shows up—spouting grandiose plans and persuading them to stay.

Days become weeks; documents go missing; money gets tight. Suddenly, Ben and Malia can't leave. Caught between bizarre real estate offers, suspect drug deals, and internal jealousies, this unlikely band of surfers, aid-workers, and opportunists all struggle to find their way through a fallen world, in Kilometer 99 by Tyler McMahon.

TYLER MCMAHON is the author of the novels Kilometer 99 (2014) and How the Mistakes Were Made (2011). He teaches fiction writing at Hawaii Pacific University and is the editor of Hawaii Pacific Review. He lives in Honolulu with his wife, food writer Dabney Gough.