Böcker av Matthew Vollmer

All Of Us Together In The End is a lyrical examination of transformation after loss, by a writer the New York Times calls "irresistible" and "utterly convincing."Vollmer's family memoir shimmers with wonder and enchantment and begins with the death of his mother from early-onset Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Soon after, flashing lights and floating orbs appear in the woods surrounding his family's home in rural North Carolina, where his widowed father lives. Formative memories of having been raised in the Seventh-day Adventist church resurge in Vollmer's mind, hastening self-reexamination and reckoning. He corresponds with a retired geology professor about "ghost lights," which supposedly occur more in North Carolina than any other American state. He scrolls TikTok. He contacts an eccentric shaman who lives in Spain to have transcendental psychotherapy administered over Zoom. And then Jolene emerges, a woman endeared for decades to Vollmer's father, holding secrets to their family's past. Amidst the turmoil and loneliness of the pandemic, All of Us Together in the End is a poignant and often humorous investigation into belief set in a time where it seems people will believe anything. It is an elegiac affirmation of the awesome, strange, otherworldly ways our loved ones remain alive to us, even when they are out of reach.

Brief collage-style essays that explore the ephemeral and fractured nature of life in the digital age.

Taking us from a Seventh Day Adventist boarding school to a traveling exhibition of plasticine bodies, from the moonlit paths of Yellowstone National Park to a quiet New Hampshire lake house, Vollmer's twelve stories are at once sorrowful, exuberant, and absurdly comical.

Inthese gritty, imaginative stories set in the mountains and small towns of theSouth-often in motels, theme parks, or resorts-men and women find themselves atthe mercy of an inspiration gone wrong: a man on a tryst is seduced by a ghost;a woman conducts a test to discover who is her true best friend-her husband orher dog; a beleaguered young writing professor goes one step too far whilechaperoning the famous writer he finds darkly alluring.  In the title story, an ex-high-schoolbasketball player living an uneventful life in her small hometown as a cashier helps her boyfriend rob a lottery winner, and finds herselfon an epic journey of fear, deceit, and betrayal.