"These profound, revealing stories glow with tenderness and deeply felt compassion. They linger with you long after reading." —Ling Ma, author of Severance and Bliss Montage
In ten surprising and subtly devastating stories, Will Boast explores the complex ways in which we long for a home, for connection and purpose. A Sicilian barber takes on a refugee as an apprentice and upends his own quiet village life. A lonely New York architect starts an ill-advised relationship with an aspiring congressman. The comic mayhem of teenage locals in a tourist town suddenly turns deadly serious. A shooting in northern Wisconsin involving an immigrant sets a community against itself. The Submerged draws unforgettable portraits of those forced into exile and those who choose it themselves. Boast asks just what we’ll do when the time comes to leave everything behind.
“The persistence of human contradiction, rather than setting, mood, or perspective, unifies the stories in this remarkable collection. Will Boast is an equally merciless and merciful chronicler of the contemporary moment.” —Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
"Bursting with compassion and wit and intelligence, The Submerged is a stunning collection that explores what it means to find home—and to lose it. An astonishing new book by one of our most exciting writers." —Molly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans
“A breathtakingly honest look at the silent compromises we make to remain in the places we love. Lyrical and profound, this is short fiction at its most potent.” —Andrew Porter, author of The Imagined Life
"From the start, I understood that these were stories that would challenge and delight me. Boast is a master at complicating the narrative in unexpected ways and upending the reader’s assumptions. This, I believe, is the job of literature, maybe especially now: To make us question what we hold true about the world and others and even ourselves." —Lori Ostlund, author of The Bigness of the World and Are You Happy?
