Pepperleaf

by Ross McMeekin

308 pages, Paperback

Published May 22, 2026

About the author

Ross McMeekin is author of the novel PEPPERLEAF (Thirty West, 2026), as well as a story collection, BELOW THE FALLS (Thirty West, 2024), and a novel, THE HUMMINGBIRDS (Skyhorse, 2018). His short fiction has appeared in literary journals and magazines such as Virginia Quarterly Review, Tin House's Open Bar, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Shenandoah, Redivider, and X-R-A-Y. He served as editor of the literary journal Spartan for over a decade. He studied fiction at Vermont College of Fine Arts, earning a Master’s in Fine Arts, and holds a Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Washington. He’s won year-long writing fellowships from Jack Straw Cultural Center and Hugo House in Seattle.

Reviews

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully crafted and perfectly paced. Each character was thoroughly developed and contributed to larger explorations of personhood and community. I enjoyed every moment with the novel. Such a terrific read.

[Erik Evenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

YOLO4EVER is what’s written on the side of Pete Summers’ tent, which is pitched on his lawn, just outside of his house. Pete, one of the half-dozen or so main characters, didn’t write it. It was tagged by someone else, but from Pete’s point of view, it might well have been the universe tagging it. You only live once forever sounds at once profound, an aphorism of our time, and something culled from a Google search where the author wrote in the search bar: deep quotes. The fact that the author couldn’t be bothered to write the whole phrase out, packaging it instead in a cliched abbreviation, makes it all the more inane, which seems apt.

On the surface, Pepperleaf follows members of a small suburb of Seattle as they struggle through the inanities of living, of waking up every morning and going to work, or watching kids, or finding something to do with themselves, things like tagging tents, fixing roofs, collecting sports cards, bowling, performing taxidermies, drinking, and learning how to twist balloons into animals.

Below the surface, Pepperleaf is pinging the universe in a search for meaning. Each character is looking in their own way, following their own course, getting tripped up by their own shortcomings. Often in their search, the things both propelling them forward and holding them back are themselves and each other. And the paths they take may seem small, mundane, but don’t kid yourself. These journeys, small as they may be, are as epic as any traditional hero going on a quest.

Pepperleaf recognizes the cosmic importance of mundanities: the habits, chores, routines, responsibilities, hobbies of one year somewhere in the middle of a life aren’t the things we should be skipping over, getting out of the way in order to find the larger meaning, they are the larger meaning. And the barriers, tiny as they may seem, are also colossal. Take one of Pete Summers’ dilemmas in the beginning of the book: he wants to change his company’s name except that he already bought 200 coffee mugs with its current name, Pete Summers Construction, on it. Or how about Steve Lando, when he hears Sheryl Crow on what he believes is his mother’s CD deck in the car and won’t be able to think of his mother the same way again, because she might be Sheryl Crow fan, something he didn’t know about her. Some scenes are downright Biblical, like when Daphne Summers and her children witness the river overflowing onto the road their driving on and salmon are swimming in front of their car.

The book also has its payoffs for attentive readers, with characters flitting in and out of each others’ presence as they, not so much bump into each other, but encounter each other (by cosmic chance? by cosmic design?). One of the rewards of these encounters is that the narration allows us to see each of the main characters through the eyes of others, showing us the discrepancies between what they think of themselves and what others see in them.

And of course there is the ending, which is one of the most affecting and deftly developed landing spots I’ve read in quite some time. The cosmos is pinging back with not any sort of definite answer, but perhaps producing enough of a beacon to get everyone a few steps forward on their journey.

[Liz Kellebrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Master storyteller Ross McMeekin opens a window onto the intersecting lives of the residents of Pepperleaf. In this sharp-eyed, witty, and poignant tale, a motley cast of characters discovers they can all become more than they thought possible as life breaks them out and open. True to its Pacific Northwest setting and to the human condition, PEPPERLEAF is a literary delight.