SOUTH
a novel by Richard Ploetz
A mosaic of grief, a lifetime of love and loss, rendered with the cadence of Hemingway.
South is a novel about grief, marriage, artistic ambition, and the search for home. Told through interconnected stories and journal entries, it follows Bert Staub, an aspiring writer, and Trudy Steiner, a painter, from their first meeting in upstate New York through years in rural Vermont, New Haven, and New York City.
Within their seemingly idyllic marriage, the fissures that were once obscured become evident as the couple grapples with the loss of their child in a premature birth. In the wake of this monumental loss, Bert and Trudy leave their hometown to live off the grid in rural Vermont, where the symptoms of unresolved grief begin to take their toll.
Over the next decade, Bert and Trudy’s marriage steadily falters under the weight of monotony and unfulfilled ambition, and the American dream as envisioned by the two young idealists begins to lose its center. In an attempt to revitalize their youth, they depart to live as artists in 1980s New York City. As they struggle to come to terms with their persistent discontent—both with themselves and each other—the story delicately unfolds and, in the minutiae and depth of their experiences, articulates the neuroses of lives lived in quiet despair.
In this devastating debut, Ploetz writes with intelligence and intoxicating honesty, reminding us of the essential beauty found not in righteousness or ambition, but in the complexity of the lives we live beneath our brittle ideals.
“This is a remarkable book. Ploetz has an extraordinary ear. ”
—Matthew Gasda, author of The Sleepers and Dimes Square
“At once intimate and far-reaching, South follows one man’s search for meaning while echoing a larger American struggle to live up to its highest ideals. ”
—Stephen Yaffe, playwright and screenwriter
“Spare, searing, Richard Ploetz’s South is the portrait of an American marriage you need to read. Effortlessly winding its way through decades of love and hope and despair, South conjures the intimacies of a human relationship like few
contemporary novels do. You won’t forget Bert or Trudy. ”
—Ross Barkan, author of Colossus and Glass Century
“Ploetz describes a character in South as ‘a flamingo at a blackbird party. ’ Ploetz is a blackbird at a flamingo party of lesser writers: melodic, harsh, resourceful, and more than capable of recognizing human faces, hearts, and souls. ”
—Bruce Wagner, author of Amputation