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19 days and 00:30:28
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Fail Sons
Not yet published
Expected 6 Oct 26Win a free print copy of this book!
19 days and 00:30:28
20 copies available
U.S. only
A pair of estranged brothers drive their father’s cryonically frozen body across the country to its final resting place in a darkly comic 21st century update of As I Lay Dying.
When Scott Platt’s brother, Nick, calls to ask him to fly to Arizona and retrieve their father’s body from the Cryo Center where it’s been frozen since the nineties, the timing couldn’t be worse: He’s forty, unemployed, and spiraling as he and his wife await the birth of their first child. Nick’s as tightly wound as Scott is adrift, and the brothers have never gotten along. But the Cryo Center’s shutting down, and they’ve got six days to haul their father’s frozen body to a new facility in Massachusetts—without letting it thaw past –109°. And Scott needs to get back home to New York before his wife goes into labor.
It’s the summer of 2022. The country’s still reeling from the pandemic. And driving a corpse cross-country in a U-Haul through Red State America proves predictably chaotic. Nick insists on wearing a KN95 the entire time. They pass through deserts, mountains, and plains, encountering Aryan cops, ex-Mormon hitchhikers, a Gen Z commune, and MAGA-hat-wearing Walmart clerks. They play blackjack, take shrooms, and swim under the stars—all while trying to keep the body frozen and their relationship from melting down.
Fail Sons is a brilliant exploration of masculinity, grief, and the ways we carry the dead—and each other—across a divided America.
When Scott Platt’s brother, Nick, calls to ask him to fly to Arizona and retrieve their father’s body from the Cryo Center where it’s been frozen since the nineties, the timing couldn’t be worse: He’s forty, unemployed, and spiraling as he and his wife await the birth of their first child. Nick’s as tightly wound as Scott is adrift, and the brothers have never gotten along. But the Cryo Center’s shutting down, and they’ve got six days to haul their father’s frozen body to a new facility in Massachusetts—without letting it thaw past –109°. And Scott needs to get back home to New York before his wife goes into labor.
It’s the summer of 2022. The country’s still reeling from the pandemic. And driving a corpse cross-country in a U-Haul through Red State America proves predictably chaotic. Nick insists on wearing a KN95 the entire time. They pass through deserts, mountains, and plains, encountering Aryan cops, ex-Mormon hitchhikers, a Gen Z commune, and MAGA-hat-wearing Walmart clerks. They play blackjack, take shrooms, and swim under the stars—all while trying to keep the body frozen and their relationship from melting down.
Fail Sons is a brilliant exploration of masculinity, grief, and the ways we carry the dead—and each other—across a divided America.
- GenresFiction
240 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication October 6, 2026
About the author
Adam Wilson
6 books114 followersAdam Wilson is the author of the novel Flatscreen, a National Jewish Book Award finalist, and the collection of short stories What's Important Is Feeling. His stories have appeared in The Paris Review, Tin House, VICE, and The Best American Short Stories, among many other publications. In 2012 he received the Terry Southern Prize, which recognizes "wit, panache, and sprezzatura" in work published by The Paris Review. He teaches creative writing at Columbia and NYU and lives in Brooklyn.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 17, 2026
This book was a funny, wild ride. I was rooting for these brothers the entire time.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Those sons sure do fail, alright.
Adam Wilson brings such a fun, loose tone to this book that made it a really enjoyable read the whole way through. The whole "frozen dead father in a truck" concept manages a difficult balancing act between serious and unserious quite well. It is an absurd situation, carrying out your dad's dumbest request after he failed you and himself, but there's still pathos there.
The political satire element of the book also worked well for me. I think a lot of parodies of Gen Z, from activist students to polyamorous hippies, often read as a bit preachy and mean. You can often tell the author has a sincere bone to pick with the youth that makes it fall flat. In Fail Sons, it comes across as more of a goodhearted gentle ribbing, and Adam Wilson refuses to make anyone purely a caricature.
I read another book featuring a man going on a roadtrip where he ignores his wife and his health while he ponders growing old in the new world, The Rest Of Our Lives by Ben Markovits. That novel was unbearably whiny and unselfaware, and Fail Sons is such a good counterbalance to it. Fail Sons is just self-aware enough to give a bit of insight to a generation I'm not part of, but not to the point where we enter a post-ironic metatextual hell.
All around a feel good novel in the classic sense, would recommend for booksellers as something to stock.
Adam Wilson brings such a fun, loose tone to this book that made it a really enjoyable read the whole way through. The whole "frozen dead father in a truck" concept manages a difficult balancing act between serious and unserious quite well. It is an absurd situation, carrying out your dad's dumbest request after he failed you and himself, but there's still pathos there.
The political satire element of the book also worked well for me. I think a lot of parodies of Gen Z, from activist students to polyamorous hippies, often read as a bit preachy and mean. You can often tell the author has a sincere bone to pick with the youth that makes it fall flat. In Fail Sons, it comes across as more of a goodhearted gentle ribbing, and Adam Wilson refuses to make anyone purely a caricature.
I read another book featuring a man going on a roadtrip where he ignores his wife and his health while he ponders growing old in the new world, The Rest Of Our Lives by Ben Markovits. That novel was unbearably whiny and unselfaware, and Fail Sons is such a good counterbalance to it. Fail Sons is just self-aware enough to give a bit of insight to a generation I'm not part of, but not to the point where we enter a post-ironic metatextual hell.
All around a feel good novel in the classic sense, would recommend for booksellers as something to stock.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews