We're in Trouble [Paperback]

This book begins with We're in Trouble, a suite of three stories that introduces its common theme: love darkening and persevering as it is tried by the cold fact of death. And in the vivid stories that follow, as Coake's unforgettable characters experience love staring at the face of death, it elicits either the best or the worst in them. From a wife waiting for news of her husband's latest death-defying climb to a sheriff thrown into turmoil after his close friend enacts a horrifying murder-suicide, Coake makes us feel the truth of his imperiled characters' lives and transforms it into cathartic art.

With the complexity, depth, and narrative drive of a novel, this extraordinary debut collection is at once suspenseful, empathic, and almost unbearably moving.

PRAISE FORWE'RE IN TROUBLE

“Sometimes when you're reading these stories, you forget to breathe . . . They’re beautifully written, and they have bottom, but they’re never dull and they all contain striking and dramatic narrative ideas.”--Nick Hornby, author ofA Long Way Down,inThe Believer

“Uncanny, clear-eyed . . . [Coake] is wildly engaging as he explores one theme--love in the face of harrowing death (or near-death)--from seemingly every angle.A-.”--Entertainment Weekly

I. Back Down to Earth

ERIC AND KRISTEN ARE IN UNFAMILIAR TERRITORY. THEY have only known one another a few weeks, but they have decided they are already deeply, madly in love.

This love, this unexpected boon, has come to them with amazing speed and intensity. And at the right time. They're young-Eric is twenty-four, Kristen twenty-two-but they met as each was concluding a long and tumultuous relationship. Kristen had just left her boyfriend of four years. Eric's divorce, after three years of marriage, has only this week been finalized.

In celebration, they have taken a hotel room downtown, and have la