YOUR ONLY BEST HOPE: STORIES BY E.G. SILVERMAN (DEBUT LITERARY COLLECTION)

Your Only Best Hope is told in E.G. Silverman’s unsparing, raw voice. Drink beer and eat pizza with a venture capitalist and a rock star as they attempt to hang out at a local bar unnoticed. Become immersed in small-town Maine as a Bostonian hardware store franchisee falls for a younger woman who wants more from him than he's ready to give.

Commiserate with the proprietor of a central New Jersey neighborhood pharmacy as his business dissolves and his marriage is threatened. Relive loves and travails alongside a man who sells the Pittsburgh house he grew up in after the death of his parents. Search for answers to life's most enduring mysteries—truth, love, death, and discovery.

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"Silverman's collection is an arresting portrait of humanity—a potent cocktail of flaws, insecurities, shame, and hope . . . the collection's universal themes will surely resonate."

—BlueInk Review

"Readers are swept into a roller coaster of emotions in these stories, glimpsing individuals seeking meaning and purpose amid life's complexities."

— Booklife Reviews

“Each of these witty, moving, and morally complex stories is as rich and packed with surprises as a novel. A deeply satisfying book, and a remarkable debut.”

 —Brian Morton, author of Starting Out in the Evening and Tasha: A Son's Memoir

“E.G. Silverman summons my favorite short story writers—T.C. Boyle, Tobias Wolff, Raymond Carver—and it is a joy to read such an accomplished writer at the height of his powers.”

—Dan Pope, author of Housebreaking

“‘Only the decision counts,’ a character in one of E.G. Silverman’s stories says, a suggestion reinforced in nearly every story in Your Only Best Hope. Quality short stories are built on the tension created by difficult choices, and, in story after story, Silverman thrusts his characters toward decision-making to provide that tension.”

—Gary Fincke, author of The Out-of-Sorts: Selected Stories

   "A quiet but weighty collection that will surely resonate with readers long after the last page is turned."

—Kirkus Reviews

“The titular story in E.G. Silverman’s collection features a third-year university student named Albert who, when asked by the professor of a seminar in Contemporary Fiction why he signed up for the class, responds with complete honesty: his football teammates assured him that it would be “a gut,” that is, “an easy one. One that doesn’t take a lot of work.”

The snooty professor invites the other students to mock Albert, but when a brainy young woman named Brandi is asked to give her reason for being there, she defends Albert’s response as being perfectly in sync with the principles of the seminar:  

“At its essence, the craft of fiction is employing artifice as a tool to synthesize honesty. The whole point of inventing stories is to forge a convincing method of demonstrating a verity. Which brings us to the observation that as we’ve gone around the room today, only one of us has been honest…” 

The narrative fast-forwards. After decades of marriage, Brandi is being consumed by cancer while Albert is wracked with guilt because Brandi’s alteration secretly disgusts him. The story ends with the two of them having an unconventional and unforgettable conversation about the theme of the story—complete truth—that is equal parts startling, moving, and beautiful. 

One might say that Silverman’s entire collection follows this theme. Not all his stories are as brilliantly structured or as moving as “Your Only Best Hope,” but they all represent on some level what the character, Brandi, expounds when she says, “What makes contemporary fiction different and appealing is its honesty.” Whether it’s a young bartender in a dead town begging her older depressed divorced lover to make her a permanent part of his life; a rock star at a local pizza place, toying with fans who aren’t sure if he is who he seems to be; or an aimless widower living in an island paradise previously chosen by his wife and himself, Silverman’s characters all experience epiphanies; some startling, others ordinary, but all of them realistic. 

Silverman’s opening lines are also worth mentioning for their attention-grabbing power. For instance, consider the first line of “Beacon Home”: 

“Bush Jr. is President, the housing market is booming with no end in sight, Iraq is a disaster, and I’m about to have breakfast with the first woman I had sex with, thirty-some years since I last saw or spoke to her.” 

Or “To Smile in a Dream”: “As Krl Garland walked the beach, it was a glorious day, and he knew he should be happy.” “Your Only Best Hope” is a quietly brilliant set of tales illuminating the discovery of truth in the lives of ordinary people.”

—Kathryn Atwood. Midwest Book Review

E.G. Silverman’s fiction has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Fugue Journal, Confrontation, Painted Bride Quarterly, Beloit Fiction Journal, and in many other literary journals. His short story collections and novels have placed as finalists and semi-finalists in the Black Lawrence Press Big Moose Prize, the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the Columbus State University Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence, among many more. His "Sourland Trilogy" of novels are forthcoming soon from High Frequency Press.

Learn more at EGSilverman.com.

ISBN: 978-1-962931-63-2, EPUB ISBN: 978-1-962931-64-9, LCCN: 2026900475. Jacketed hardcover with printed case laminate, 180 pages. $25.00. Forthcoming August 11.