In-Store: Adam Wilson: Fail Sons w/ Erin Somers & Daniel Kolitz
About this Event
Event guidelines:
- Each ticket will include either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card.
- Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
- A signing will follow the talk.
- Home address is collected for contact tracing purposes; it will not be used otherwise.
- The event will also be livestreamed for free here: https://youtube.com/live/UiU5QHWe1EY
- As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out.
If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact [email protected].
A pair of estranged brothers drive their father’s cryonically frozen body across a divided America to its final resting place in this darkly comic novel about masculinity and grief—a 21st century update of As I Lay Dying—from the author of Flatscreen.
When Scott Platt’s brother, Nick, calls to ask him to fly to Arizona and retrieve their father’s body from the Cryo Center where it’s been frozen since the nineties, the timing couldn’t be worse: He’s forty, unemployed, and spiraling as he and his wife await the birth of their first child. Nick’s as tightly wound as Scott is adrift, and the brothers have never gotten along. But the Cryo Center’s shutting down, and they’ve got six days to haul their father’s frozen body to a new facility in Massachusetts—without letting it thaw past –109°. And Scott needs to get back home to New York before his wife goes into labor.
It’s the summer of 2022. The country’s still reeling from the pandemic. And driving a corpse cross-country in a U-Haul through Red State America proves predictably chaotic. Nick insists on wearing a KN95 the entire time. They pass through deserts, mountains, and plains, encountering Aryan cops, ex-Mormon hitchhikers, a Gen Z commune, and MAGA-hat-wearing Walmart clerks. They play blackjack, take shrooms, and swim under the stars—all while trying to keep the body frozen and their relationship from melting down.
Fail Sons is a brilliant exploration of masculinity, grief, and the ways we carry the dead—and each other—across a divided America.
Adam Wilson is the author of the short story collection What’s Important Is Feeling, and the novels Sensation Machines and Flatscreen, which was an Indie Next Pick and a National Jewish Book Award finalist. In 2012, Wilson received The Paris Review’s Terry Southern Prize for Humor. His work has appeared in Harper’s, The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Bookforum, The Paris Review, and The Best American Short Stories among many other publications. Wilson has taught in the creative writing programs at Columbia University and NYU. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their two sons.
Erin Somers is the author of The Ten Year Affair. Her fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, The Paris Review, Esquire, GQ, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere.
Daniel Kolitz is a writer living in Brooklyn. His Harper’s Magazine article ‘The Goon Squad’ won the 2026 National Magazine Award for Feature Writing.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
USD 10.89 to USD 31.58
