Take Me with You
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
AN INSTANT USA TODAY BESTSELLER
"Only national treasure Steven Rowley could blur the otherworldly with the everyday and turn all of it into heartache-flavored comedy." —Catherine Newman, New York Times bestselling author of Sandwich and Wreck
We are all alien, even to the people who know us best.
College professor Jesse del Ruth has been abandoned. Thirty years into their relationship, Jesse witnesses his husband, Norman, get out of bed late one night, walk into their Joshua Tree backyard, step into a strange beam of light and . . . disappear. How could Norman desert him after a lifetime together? Where did he go? And, most confoundingly . . . will he ever return? Jesse knew they were both feeling stuck, longing for something they couldn’t quite name. But was their rut so deep that Norman’s only option was to leave Jesse behind?
As Jesse struggles to understand Norman’s disappearance, he tries to piece together his new reality. Is he expected to wait patiently for a partner who may never come back? Or is this an opportunity for reinvention? He is, after all, alone for the first time in his adult life. Should he return to the classroom? Put in a pool? Get a dog? Call his estranged mother? What does it mean to be alone when you’ve always been one half of a whole?
When Norman’s sister, Lally, lands on Jesse’s doorstep with an urgent request, Norman’s absence becomes even more profound. Add to Jesse’s grief and confusion a conspiracy-theorist neighbor, a strange man following him, and suspicions that he may have had a hand in Norman’s disappearance, and Jesse starts to crack under the pressure. With his husband missing and the world closing in, all eyes are on Jesse. Before he can understand how Norman could leave it all behind, Jesse must confront what it means to stay.
In Take Me With You, Steven Rowley brings his resonant wit and emotional insight to an epic love story—an exploration of the forces that draw two people into the same orbit and the gravity that threatens to pull them apart.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The always-reliable Steven Rowley (The Guncle) shifts gears a bit with this strange, tender, and very funny novel about what happens when a long marriage is interrupted by the impossible. Jesse and his husband, Norman, have spent 30 years building a comfortable life together. Then one night, Jesse watches Norman walk into the backyard, step into a mysterious beam of light, and simply vanish. Left behind with no explanation and no way to explain what he saw, Jesse has to figure out how to be on his own again. (Should he finally get that dog he’s always wanted?) Rowley balances absurdity and heartbreak beautifully, using the alien abduction premise to probe deeper questions about identity and reinvention. The desert setting gives the whole novel a lovely off-kilter magic, and Jesse’s voice is wonderful to get to know. Take Me with You is a warm, wise story about what happens to love after certainty disappears.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rowley (The Celebrants) spins a tender and lightly fantastical tale about a middle-aged man reeling from his husband's mysterious disappearance. Jesse del Ruth and his husband Norman Alfano live in Joshua Tree, Calif. One night, Norman walks into a bright light in their backyard and vanishes. Jesse, a novelist whose father disappeared while fighting in Vietnam before Jesse was born, copes by throwing himself into his job teaching a college course on comedy writing. Meanwhile, Norman's sister, Lally, shows up, determined to retrieve the frozen embryos she donated to the couple. Lally now wants to have children of her own, and Jesse lies to her about Norman's whereabouts, leading Lally to believe he will return. Jesse then digs a large hole in his backyard and visits the Integratron, a 1950s personal rejuvenation device in the Mojave Desert, for a sound bath, all in an effort to understand what happened to Norman. The novel drags in the middle, but Rowley incisively probes his character's backstories, as when Lally, who lost another brother in a childhood accident, reflects that grief "has a funny way of finding you, announcing itself, even many years later when you think you've outrun it." Readers will be won over by this heart-warming story.
