John Teton’s 2003 novel Appearing Live at the Final Test is about a black newsstand operator and three friends in a Brooklyn-like neighborhood whose lives together take a cosmic punch from a nuclear bomb threat. The tale of these four—Msongo, a middle-aged black news stand vendor who narrates the story; two potential younger lovers, Nopali, an airline stewardess and aspiring singer and Lyon, a marine radio mechanic; and Nopali’s troubled 18-year-old friend Arielle—is set in a different time and place and appears on the surface to be completely separate from Upsurge. However, the two books are actually integrated in an important way which cannot be fully perceived without reading both in their entirety, regardless of the order in which they’re read. Thus, while each story stands complete on its own, reading the set reveals the larger work underlying them.