Author Event: Wade Rouse

Join us as we welcome author Wade Rouse he celebrates the release of his new book The Bluff.

The Family Stone meets Sandwich in this humorous take on a traditional Christmas celebration that goes off the rails as family secrets are revealed and generational, social and political differences are served alongside the turkey and pumpkin pie, in this witty look at surviving the holidays.

Beneath the picture-perfect façade of the Chapman family’s annual Christmas card photo lies a gathering more nightmare than Norman Rockwell. At their magnificently restored heritage lake house, tensions simmer as a blizzard traps generations of Champans, forcing them to confront long-buried secrets and clashing values.

Chris Chapman has lost the trust of his father, who built the powerful Chapman family business from scratch, and is on the brink of losing his job to his ambitious younger brother. Meanwhile, his wife Kat, a former journalist turned reluctant homemaker, struggles to save their cantilevered home from crumbling into the waves of Lake Michigan—along with her sense of self. Kat finally put her foot down this year and insisted on including her working class parents in the Chapman tradition, a move she may regret long before the turkey is carved.
Their children, fiercely liberal Leah and conservative golden-boy Chip, embody the family’s growing ideological divide, while the arrival of Chris’s competitive brother Cormac and his vapid bride (or so everyone thinks) only stirs the pot. Add to the mix passive-aggressive Grandma Chapman, whose motto is “Christmas is our holiday. We do not share it with other people.” She is sharing it this year and she is not happy.

Kat’s parents, Bob and Shirley Brown, are traditional Midwesterners to the bone. But while the Chapmans dismiss them as inconsequential outsiders, Shirley has a big secret that she’s tempted to spill.

As snow piles up outside, so do the grievances, leading to a holiday showdown where respect, dignity, and the future of the family hang in the balance. Think Christmas, but with a storm of secrets, rivalries, and a dash of dark humor.

Wade Rouse is an international and USA TODAY bestselling author of thirteen books, which have been translated into twenty languages and selected as Today Show Must-Reads, Indie Next Picks and Michigan Notable Books. Rouse writes fiction under his grandma’s name, Viola Shipman, to honor the working-poor Ozarks woman whose memory inspires his writing. He lives in Michigan and California, and hosts Wine & Words with Wade, a literary happy hour, every Thursday.