Set in 2015 during Obama’s presidency and Trump’s early candidacy, the tranquil college town of Horace, Oregon, is disrupted when white students taunt a Black student in the high school library. This incident sparks immediate repercussions that ripple through the community, affecting students, families, and faculty alike. Woody, the school’s guidance counselor, finds himself thrust into the spotlight after years on the sidelines. Lark, a struggling student, grapples with the fallout as her relationships are reshaped by the incident. Stefanie, a conflicted parent, struggles to balance protecting her child with allowing him to find his own path. Friendships are strained, marriages are tested, and families face the threat of sudden violence. When tragedy strikes with the death of a student, the survivors are left grappling with the fault lines in their most intimate relationships and searching for ways to draw closer.
Closer explores themes of community, resilience, and the impacts of individual actions on collective destinies, offering a poignant reflection on how individuals grapple with their lives amidst societal challenges and personal reckonings.

Praise for Closer

“Miriam Gershow has written a novel of tremendous insight, unflinching realism, and transcendent generosity. Closer will keep you up late turning pages while its vivid and complex characters take up permanent residence in your head and heart. Bravo!”

—Antoine Wilson, author of Mouth To Mouth

“If the Obama presidency feels like a long ago innocent time in light of all that’s happened since, Miriam Gershow’s keenly observed, cleverly structured new novel Closer shows that the bitter seeds of division, intimidation, and unrest were growing then and have continued to regenerate since the founding of the country. What plays out in a public school in Oregon in 2015—racism, harassment, bullying, preventable death—feels like a microcosm of the turmoil that’s been tearing apart our national community. This riveting, high stakes, yet subtly political novel kept me up late turning pages and will stay with me for a very long time.”

—Porter Shreve, author of The End of the Book and The Obituary Writer

“This novel is amazing! Post-millennial culture pays lip service to diversity, but Closer gives meaning to the term. In powerful prose vignettes that read like poems, Gershow rounds up the usual suspects—race, gender, generation, religion, income, disability, sexuality—but gives voice and perspective to characters who insist on being human—often maddeningly so. Gershow both sounds the notes of our time and echoes Thoreau’s timeless ‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.’”

—David Bradley, author of The Chaneysville Incident

“Miriam Gershow’s propulsive novel, Closer, is a fearless tour-de-force of imagination and empathy. Racist bullying of interracial high school sweethearts in a liberal, majority-white university town opens the story. Gershow’s quicksilver shifts in points of view deepen it, illustrating how we yearn to be seen for who we want ourselves to be, while carelessly using the markers of race, class, education, and ability to marginalize and minimize others. Serious stuff, but one of Gershow’s many gifts is writing funny, making us love the relatable characters in Closer even when they flip-flop between perceptive and clued-out, and barrel toward tragedy.”

—Mary Rechner, author of Marrying Friends and Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women

“Miriam Gershow has her finger on the pulse of high school angst and the forever adolescent who resides in every one of us. Her characters are so tender, flawed, and deeply real, we can’t help but root for them as they chase the alluring spell of true love. At the same time, we feel the mounting dread of all that this spell endangers. Like Tom Perotta’s Little Children without the satire, Closer dismantles illusions of parental ability to protect their offspring’s inner lives—or their own. Children of all ages will fall prey to love’s illusions in this multigenerational tragedy.”

—Aimee Liu, author of Glorious Boy and Gaining

“Miriam Gershow has written a work of extraordinary breadth and depth, filled with delicious scenes of carefree teenage infatuation and middleage lust. I’m awed by Gershow’s funny and detailed rendering of the twined lives of these likable dupes, none of whom see the dark future coming until it’s too late.”

—Susanna Daniel, author of Stiltsville and Sea Creatures

“With warmth and humor, Gershow deftly navigates a tangled web of crisscrossing landmines—family, friendship, class, race, adolescence, and love. It is a combustible stew that a lesser writer might shy from, but Gershow attacks these thorny topics head on. With multidimensional, nuanced characters and gorgeous, propulsive prose, this is a story that will stay with readers long after the shocking, heart-stopping end."

—Jennifer Oko, author of Just Emilia, Lying Together, and Gloss