We, Adults by Peter Stenson Book Spotlight!

Elliot Svendson has returned to her childhood Minnesota home to lick her wounds after catching her professor husband between the legs of one of his grad students. Leaving behind a promising academic career, she finds herself raising her five-year-old son solo and working at a Talbot’ s in the mall to make ends meet. It’ s there that she meets Madison Johnson, a young man with a penchant for skateboards, weed, and older women. What Elliot doesn’ t know is that Madison is only seventeen years old. When Madison and Elliot’ s affair is exposed, the news sends shockwaves that will rock their lives and the lives of those around them.

298 pages, Paperback Published March 26, 2024 

About WE, ADULTS 

Elliot Svendson has returned to her childhood Minnesota home to lick her wounds after catching her professor husband having an affair with one of his grad students. Leaving behind a promising academic career, she finds herself raising her five-year-old son solo and working at a Talbot' s in the mall to make ends meet.

 It' s there that she meets Madison Johnson, a young man with a penchant for skateboards, weed, and older women. What Elliot doesn't know is that Madison is only seventeen years old. When Madison and Elliot's affair is exposed, the news sends shockwaves that will rock their lives and the lives of those around them.

WE, ADULTS is told in four parts (Elliot’s own narration, chapters from her ex’s unpublished memoir, Madison’s screenplay version of the events, and young Jacob Svendson’s eventual college application essays). 

The novel is both epic and intimate, striving to balance rage, resignation, humor and heartbreak through the dissection of the brief affair that sends these four lives spinning out of control.

Peter Stenson is the author of the novels FIEND (Random House), THIRTY-SEVEN (DZANC), and THE SEXUAL LIVES OF SUBURBANITES (forthcoming from Jackleg Press). He has stories and essays published in The Sun , Bellevue Literary Review , The Greensboro Review , Confrontation , Harpur Palate , and Post Road , among others. He teaches writing at Colorado State University.

Peter Stenson on his inspiration for writing the novel

Says Peter on his inspiration for the book, "I was kicked out of high school. I moved across the country to a halfway house for boys. I got better, at least partially. I was eighteen. I earned my GED. I started eating and even working out. I planned on applying to colleges. And then I met a thirty-year-old woman.

She had a crow tattooed across her back and a gap between her two front teeth and smiled with her eyes, like the whole of them, all of which is to say I fell in love or infatuation or at least I fell victim to the idea that she could provide me with the esteem I so desperately craved. 

The halfway house had a strict no fraternization rule. I lasted two dates with this woman before the guilt overpowered the fragile consciousness I was trying the develop. I moved out that afternoon and into a Section-8 apartment with the woman and her four-year-old daughter. This novel is my attempt to make sense of this experience."

Shockingly personal...Shaun of the Dead meets Trainspotting.” — MTV.com on FIEND

“This novel is a provocative, thoroughly gripping ride.” — Publishers Weekly on THIRTY-SEVEN

“A book that manages to break your heart, make you dizzy, and punch you in the gut all at once. You will be hard-pressed to find a novel as dark or intense in any bookstore.”  — Kirkus Reviews *Starred* review on THIRTY-SEVEN

Kirkus Reviews praises the novel as "a memorable, enticing account of conflicting lovers," Booklist says, "Stenson's brilliantly vivid prose and striking characters deserve the widest possible audience," and Criminal Element enthuses: "Stenson is one of the best-kept secrets in transgressive fiction." From a voice and stylistic standpoint, WE, ADULTS celebrates the storied tradition of counterculture and transgressive fiction, and is a must-read for fans of Homes, Palahniuk, McCarthy, Welsh, and Easton Ellis.