Steven Rowley + Brian Schaefer: Take Me with You

Moderating this event is notable writer Brian Schaefer. This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.

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"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

A poignant, hilarious, and wholly original love story, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Celebrants and winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor.

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 longing for something, both feeling stuck. But had Norman been so stuck that his 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.

Photo credit: Afonso Salcedo

Steven Rowley is the New York Times bestselling author of Lily and the Octopus, a Washington Post Notable Book; The Editor, an NPR Best Book of the Year; The Guncle, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor and Goodreads Choice Awards finalist for Novel of the Year; The Celebrants, a Today Show Read with Jenna book club pick; The Guncle Abroad, a USA Today bestseller; and the novella The Dogs of Venice. His fiction has been translated into twenty languages. He resides in Palm Springs, California.

Brian Schaefer contributed regularly to The New York Times for over a decade and has written for The New Yorker, New York magazine, Haaretz Newspaper, and more. He was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Arts Journalism, a finalist for the Livingston Award in International Reporting and a longtime Scholar-in-Residence at the Jacob’s Dance Festival. He earned his master’s degree in creative writing from Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, and his debut novel, TOWN & COUNTRY, was published by Simon & Schuster in November 2025.

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