Solomon Kugel wishes for nothing more than to be nowhere, to be in a place with no past, no history, no wars, no genocides. The rural town of Stockton, New York, is famous for nothing: which is exactly why Kugel decided to move his family there. To begin again. To start anew. But it isn't quite working out that way. His ailing mother stubbornly holds on to life, and won't stop reminiscing about the Nazi concentration camps she never actually suffered through. Shalom Auslander was raised in Monsey, New York. Nominated for the Koret Award for writers under thirty-five, he has published articles in Esquire, the New York Times Magazine, Tablet, and the New Yorker, and has had stories aired on NPR's This American Life. He is the author of the short-story collection Beware of God and the memoir Foreskin's Lament. He lives in New York.
