“Book Descriptions: From award-winning fiction writer, Amy Stuber, comes a witty, empathic, "powerhouse" (Booklist) debut collection that explores American life in the shadow of climate crisis and late-stage capitalism. For those who've been sad and tried not to be, seventeen stories about the absurdity of searching for joy in a dying world.
A neighborhood of picturesque content-creation houses perched on too-green lawns in a California desert; a meandering stampede of unleashed dogs on the streets of San Francisco; a skein of snow geese alighting in a state park in Missouri; an uncanny fundraising auction at an upscale suburban-DC prep school. Inhabiting these worlds of disconnection and dislocation are the "sad grownups" a middle-aged queer couple arguing over whether to have children, a college professor dying from cancer, two recent high school graduates plotting a robbery, a sixty-year-old counselor at a boys' summer camp sheltering herself from the realities of life-all connected more closely to the landscapes around them than to other people, searching fervently for liberation, understanding, and even happiness, wherever and however they might be found.
Melancholy, engagingly weird, and very humane, with metafictional elements throughout.” DRIVE