Margins
Take Me With You book cover
Take Me With You
2026
First Published
3.89
Average Rating
336
Number of Pages

A poignant, hilarious, and wholly original love story, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Celebrants and winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor. College professor Jesse del Ruth has been abandoned. Thirty years into their relationship, Jesse witnesses his husband Norman get out of bed late one night, walk into their Joshua Tree backyard, step into a strange beam of light and . . . disappear. How could Norman desert him after a lifetime together? Where did he go? And, most confoundingly . . . will he ever return? Jesse knew they were longing for something, both feeling stuck. But had Norman been so stuck that his only option was to leave Jesse behind? As Jesse struggles to understand Norman’s disappearance, he tries to piece together his new reality. Is he expected to wait patiently for a partner who may never come back? Or is this an opportunity for reinvention? He is, after all, alone for the first time in his adult life. Should he return to the classroom? Put in a pool? Get a dog? Call his estranged mother? What does it mean to be alone when you’ve always been one half of a whole? When Norman’s sister Lally lands on Jesse’s doorstep with an urgent request, Norman’s absence becomes even more profound. Add to Jesse’s grief and confusion a conspiracy-theorist neighbor, a strange man following him, and suspicions that he may have had a hand in Norman’s disappearance, and Jesse starts to crack under the pressure. With his husband missing and the world closing in, all eyes are on Jesse. Before he can understand how Norman could leave it all behind, Jesse must confront what it means to stay. In Take Me With You, Steven Rowley brings his resonant wit and emotional insight to an epic love story – an exploration of the forces that draw two people into the same orbit and the gravity that threatens to pull them apart.

Avg Rating
3.89
Number of Ratings
111
5 STARS
27%
4 STARS
40%
3 STARS
30%
2 STARS
3%
1 STARS
1%
goodreads

Author

Steven Rowley
Steven Rowley
Author · 7 books
Steven Rowley is the bestselling author of Lily and the Octopus, a Washington Post Notable Book of 2016, The Editor, named by NPR and Esquire Magazine as one of the Best Books of 2019, and The Guncle, a Goodreads Choice Awards finalist for 2021 Novel of the Year and semi-finalist for The Thurber Prize in American Humor. His fiction has been published in twenty languages. Rowley lives in Palm Springs, CA with his husband, the writer Byron Lane.
548 Market St PMB 65688, San Francisco California 94104-5401 USA
© 2026 Paratext Inc. All rights reserved