First published 2014
Professor Hank Tattersall catches sight of Lucy Stiles at a campus concert and triggers a cascade of chaos. His careful self-examination becomes his downfall as he stumbles through a series of humiliating episodes, culminating in an unforgettable disaster involving a locked door, a drunk dog, and a wordplay-obsessed double. Meanwhile, Tillie Seltzer wrestles with her own suburban prison. Her husband Pete tucks cigarettes behind his ear and calls everyone Frisbee. She once preferred mysterious men in homburg hats, but as a thirty-something virgin with dwindling options, she settled. Pete took her honeymoon joke literally, and now she's trapped with a sick child and a cheating spouse. Tillie stares into her rearview mirror, plotting her escape from a life that went sideways. Her search for freedom leads somewhere she never expected. These two novellas connect when Tillie briefly enters Hank's world, binding together their separate descents into middle-class absurdity.
Genres: fiction, humor, contemporary, academic
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking, whimsical
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family
Setting: Campus
Period: 20th-century
234 pages · ebook · Open Road Media