Early one summer morning, Matthew Bishop kisses his still-sleeping wife Marissa, gets dressed and eases his truck through Milwaukee, bound for the highway. His wife, pregnant with their first child, has asked him to find the antique cradle taken years before by her mother Caroline when she abandoned Marissa, never to contact her daughter again. Soon to be a mother herself, Marissa now dreams of nothing else but bringing her baby home to the cradle she herself slept in. His wife does not kn...

A VINTAGE ORIGINALIn this hilarious and wildly inventive debut, including a title story that was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Patrick Somerville charts the dangerous territories of adolescence and adulthood for the American male.In “Puberty,” Brandon takes the matter of his reticent hormones into his own hands. In “English Cousin,” Terry’s enigmatic relative arrives, looking to learn about love, stateside. And in “The Future, the Future, the Future,” D...

From award-winning novelist Patrick Somerville comes this genre-busting novel-in-stories that leaps between small-town suburbs and the outer reaches of outer-space. A cast of outcasts—including the world's angriest mercenary, a sad surrealist, and a messianic alcoholic lawyer—bind together in this surprisingly warm exploration of love and identity in the post-millennial world.

From a writer and producer of HBO's acclaimed apocalyptic drama series The Leftovers comes a compelling story of young love and old secrets.Ben Hanson's aimless life has bottomed out after a series of bad decisions, but an unexpected offer from his father draws him home to Wisconsin. There, he finds his family fractured, still reeling from his cousin's mysterious death a decade earlier.Lauren Sheehan abandoned her career in medicine after a series ...

From a writer and producer of HBO's acclaimed apocalyptic drama series The Leftovers comes a compelling story of young love and old secrets.Ben Hanson's aimless life has bottomed out after a series of bad decisions, but an unexpected offer from his father draws him home to Wisconsin. There, he finds his family fractured, still reeling from his cousin's mysterious death a decade earlier.Lauren Sheehan abandoned her career in medicine after a series ...

The Summer 2023 Issue. Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Since 1971, Ploughshares has discovered and cultivated the freshest voices in contemporary American literature, and now provides readers with thoughtful and entertaining literature in a variety of formats. Find out why the New York Times named Ploughshares “the Triton among minnows.”The Summer 2023 Issue, guest-edited by Tom Perrotta, features prose by Marianne Leone, Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, Andre Dubus III...