Stag Dance: A Novel & Stories

**PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “This inventive, boundary-pushing follow-up to *Detransition, Baby* . . . [takes] on gender, transness and lives on the margins in all of their gorgeously complicated glory.”— *People***
**“Hot, heartbreaking, and thrillingly victorious.”—Miranda July, *New York Times* bestselling author of *All Fours***
***NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW* EDITORS’ CHOICE • LONGLISTED FOR THE STORY PRIZE • ONE OF *VULTURE'S* TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, *The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Elle, Electric Lit, them,* Chicago Public Library**
In this collection of one novel and three stories, bestselling author Torrey Peters’s keen eye for the rough edges of community and desire push the limits of trans writing.
In *Stag Dance,* the titular novel, a group of restless lumberjacks working in an illegal winter logging outfit plan a dance that some of them will volunteer to attend as women. When the broadest, strongest, plainest of the axmen announces his intention to dance as a woman, he finds himself caught in a strange rivalry with a pretty young jack, provoking a cascade of obsession, jealousy, and betrayal that will culminate on the big night in an astonishing vision of gender and transition.
Three startling stories surround *Stag Dance* : “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones” imagines a gender apocalypse brought about by an unstable ex-girlfriend. In “The Chaser,” a secret romance between roommates at a Quaker boarding school brings out intrigue and cruelty. In the last story, “The Masker,” a party weekend on the Las Vegas strip turns dark when a young crossdresser must choose between two guides: a handsome mystery man who objectifies her in thrilling ways, or a cynical veteran trans woman offering unglamorous sisterhood.
Acidly funny and breathtaking in its scope, with the inventive audacity of George Saunders or Jennifer Egan, *Stag Dance* provokes, unsettles, and delights.