Book Event: The Hitch by Sara Levine

From the author of the cult classic Treasure Island , a delightfully unhinged comedy following a woman as she attempts to exorcise the spirit of a dead corgi from her nephew and renegotiate the borders of her previously rational world

Rose Cutler defines herself by her exacting standards. As an anti-racist, Jewish secular feminist eco-warrior, she is convinced she knows the right way to do everything, including parent her six-year-old nephew Nathan. When Rose offers to look after him while his parents visit Mexico for a week, her brother and sister-in-law reluctantly agree, provided she understands the rules--routine, bedtime, homework--and doesn't overstep. But when Rose's Newfoundland attacks and kills a corgi at the park, Nathan starts acting strangely: barking, overeating, talking to himself. Rose mistakes this behavior as repressed grief over the corgi's death, but Nathan insists he isn't grieving, and the dog isn't dead. Her soul leaped into his body, and now she's living inside him. Now Rose must banish the corgi from her nephew before the week ends and his parents return to collect their child.

With the ferocious absurdity of Rachel Yoder's Nightbitch and the dark, brazen humor of Melissa Broder's Death Valley, The Hitch is a tantalizingly bizarre novel about loneliness, bad boundaries, and the ill-fated strategy of micromanaging everything and everyone around you.

Sara Levine is the author of the novel Treasure Island!!! and the short story collection Short Dark Oracles. She holds a PhD in English from Brown University and teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a nonprofit publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, and a founding member of Poems While You Wait. She is author of five novels, including Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk and Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey, as well as the poetry collection Where Are the Snows. She lives in Chicago and teaches at DePaul University.

Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are strongly encouraged. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email [email protected] by no later than 14 days before the event. For scholarship tickets or other access needs please email .

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Women & Children First