A mosaic of grief, a lifetime of love and loss, rendered with the cadence of Hemingway

South is a novel about grief, marriage, artistic ambition, and the search for home. Told through interconnected stories and journal entries, it follows Bert Staub, an aspiring writer, and Trudy Steiner, a painter, from their first meeting in upstate New York through years in rural Vermont, New Haven, and New York City.

Within their seemingly idyllic marriage, the fissures that were once obscured become evident as the couple grapples with the loss of their child in a premature birth. In the wake of this monumental loss, Bert and Trudy leave their hometown to live off the grid in rural Vermont, where the symptoms of unresolved grief begin to take their toll.

Over the next decade, Bert and Trudy’s marriage steadily falters under the weight of monotony and unfulfilled ambition, and the American dream as envisioned by the two young idealists begins to lose its center. In an attempt to revitalize their youth, they depart to live as artists in 1980s New York City. As they struggle to come to terms with their persistent discontent—both with themselves and each other—the story delicately unfolds and, in the minutiae and depth of their experiences, articulates the neuroses of lives lived in quiet despair.

In this devastating debut, Ploetz writes with intelligence and intoxicating honesty, reminding us of the essential beauty found not in righteousness or ambition, but in the complexity of the lives we live beneath our brittle ideals.