ANDREW MEREDITH reads from THE REMOVERS

The Removers (Scribner)

Join us tonight for a moving memoir about how working with the dead breathed life back into a young man in Philadelphia, while also repairing the long-strained relationship he had with his father.

As a teenager, Andrew watched helplessly as his father went from proud literature professor to university outcast in the face of charges of sexual harassment. The allegations created a cavernous rift between father and son, particularly as Andrew begins to have sexual experiences himself. His late teens and early 20’s are a wayward existence studded with girls, beer, music, and, occasionally but never consistently, college. Andrew’s father, his pride decimated by the rejection of the university life that once invigorated the whole Meredith family, has had to find work as a “remover,” the name for the unseen, unsung men who take away the bodies of those who die at home. Shiftless and broke, Andrew becomes a remover alongside his father. At first, they share a low-grade shock about their circumstances: how did we wind up here? How do we get out? But together they also must tackle more practical questions—like how to carry a 500-pound corpse down winding stairs—and Andrew begins to learn that simple competence is the best way to navigate adulthood.

Eventually, Andrew begins to see his father not through the lens of a wronged and resentful child, but as a sympathetic, imperfect man who loves his family despite his flaws—and the chip on his shoulder starts to lose its weight. The Removers is dark, vulnerable, and deeply moving.

Praise for The Removers

“Andrew Meredith writes with the eye of a poet and the heart of a man transformed. The Removers brims with moments of unforgettable beauty and raw honesty.”—Michael Hainey, author of After Visiting Friends

“You might be forgiven, at first, if you believe that the book in your hands is about creatures from another planet (We are nobodies. We are men made to be forgotten. We are paid to be invisible.). Prepare yourself—as you wander more deeply into this brightly-lit, finely wrought nightmare, the mirrors start appearing. Sex and death might propel the story forward, but by the end Andrew Meredith peels back the night to reveal what we are made of. The removers are not only among us, they are us. A tour-de-force whispered from the shadows.”—Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

“The Removers is for anyone whose adolescence has taken too long, whose hands need useful work, or who wants to put his family grudges away and get on with the rewards of adult life—such as the wicked laughs and the sweet, tender, singing prose of this wonderful book.”—Salvatore Scibona, author of The End

“The Removers is angry and forgiving, sometimes hideous, tough, emotionally compelling, and important. Andrew Meredith comes of age, struggles, and survives in the disintegrating blue-collar environs of Philadelphia. This book can unlock doors. Get your hands on it right away.”—William Kittredge, author of Hole in the Sky

Andrew Meredith has been awarded fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and from Yaddo. He received an MFA in Fiction from UNC-Greensboro. The Removers is his first book.