Super America

In settings as different as Honolulu, Hawaii, small-town Minnesota, and Taxco, Mexico, these nine stories and a novella show blue-collar characters struggling to achieve the American Dream—and sometimes alienating friends and family as they try to upgrade their working-class pedigree. Anne Panning’s people, despite their mixed record of success, make us root for them on their sometimes heartbreaking journeys of entrepreneurship, love, and loss.

In “Tidal Wave Wedding” a tsunami in Honolulu y...