Books by Edan Benn Epstein

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A repressed and frightened young man still living at home walks out his front door and boards a bus that he desperately hopes will take him to his new life. He takes with him nothing but money stolen from his father and the vague hope of an illicit connection with an older cousin. But his desire for escape from himself only takes him deeper and deeper into a nightmare landscape of ghastly beauty and alluring descent, one which will force him to either at last rise to his own humanity or which will instead consume and destroy him and others entirely. 

A mysterious stranger forcibly takes a drunken homeless man to a nearby motel, telling him that he must follow the stranger for 24 hours. What begins as a mystery unfolds as the story of three lost souls whose lives are intertwined in ways that are only revealed over the course of two decades; the homeless sex addict and alcoholic.; the lonely woman who bears his child; and the mathematics genius who works as a dishwasher. Like many of Epstein’s novels, Subterranean Green is a spiritually redemptive story of descent and salvation, of lives filled with both awe and ennui and with a magic touch that transcends and elevates the most ordinary of people, places, and things. 

Ari Fisher lives the perfect life in the most beautiful place on earth. As the semester ends at the college where he teaches part time, Ari has but one unexpected task to perform; to entertain one of his school’s most important donors. In an escalating game of cat and mouse with his charming new adversary, Ari’s life threatens to come completely unraveled over the course of a single evening. 

Edan Benn Epstein’s fourth novel, The Anteater, follows the hopes, fears, and secrets of seven men working for a third rate messenger service in 1985. Over the course of three days in November, the perfect storm – both literal and emotional – threatens to change each of their lives forever. Magic intertwines soulfully with grim reality in a tale of deep inner longing forever just one step ahead of existential checkmate. 

Following the death of his charismatic father, Stephen Ruskin’s first love re-enters his life. But unresolved grief and resentment towards the two people he loves sends him on a quest to become completely invisible. Stephen’s journey of inward descent perversely parallels his father’s childhood struggle to survive in the forests of Europe at the end of World War II. Afternoon of the Faun is a lyrical tale of descent, survival, and redemption. 

One night after visiting his troubled daughter, Michael Peckman, widower, is invited by his life long friend to ride with him to Stanley, Idaho to witness the total eclipse of the sun. There, a major life's reckoning awaits him. By turns funny, lyrical, exquisite, and tragic, Totality probes our capacity for love, regret, shame, and acceptance. 

Short stories include tales of a young man fighting the insane urge to throw champagne in the face of his beloved's father; a woman at work copes in paranoid ways; an underling's misplaced resentment towards his boss pushes him into a deadly street confrontation. 

In the first of two novelettes, a man sets out to lose himself in a journey to the most distant place imaginable.  In the final novelette, The Way to Nod chronicles a desperate escape from a nightmare dystopia in quest of a peaceful land that no one knows for sure really exists. Enjoy these tales from the edge.