The last time you were squatting in a Malibu beach house while nursing serious car accident injuries and contemplating the recent O.D. of your best friend, did you give much thought to Annie Oakley?

No? Maybe just a little?

That’s okay. Interweaving threads of such disparate subject and tone could only be the job of an accomplished author like Sam Brumbaugh. His first novel, Goodbye, Goodness, tells the story of 30-something Hayward Theiss, who has some time on his hands as he recuperates in the ‘Bu.

Through flashbacks, Hayward pieces together the events of the past few years of his life — a failed relationship with a mentally ill woman, a friend on the verge of self-destruction, and travels through the landscape of late 20th-century alienation — as well as his family’s connection with legendary markswoman Annie Oakley.

If it sounds strange, that’s because it is. But as the beautifully told story comes into focus, you begin to feel the relationships between the characters, each toiling at the edge of a frontier that’s been crossed a thousand times, each trying (with varying degrees of success) to live beyond loss and self-disillusionment.

A beach read? Not exactly.

Though Hayward might disagree.

Available at amazon.com or at your local bookstore.