Everyday People

**This novel of Pittsburgh, by the author of *Last Night at the Lobster*, “celebrates the lives of everyday people in an extraordinary way” (*San Francisco Chronicle*)*.***

Pittsburgh, 1998: Chris “Crest” Tolbert is eighteen years old, a soon-to-be father, and partially paralyzed after a devastating accident that left his best friend dead. In *Everyday People*, acclaimed novelist Stewart O’Nan offers a multifaceted portrait of Crest and of East Liberty, the African American neighborhood he calls home. As he deals with the challenges of new fatherhood and life as a paraplegic, Crest must also negotiate his relationships with his born-again brother and his father, who has been cheating on Crest’s mother with a younger man.

Bringing together the stories of East Liberty’s residents during one fateful autumn week, O’Nan vividly captures the experience of modern life in urban America. An emblematic work by an American master, *Everyday People* is “a living, breathing history lesson that brings together a set of compelling voices that make real and immediate the ups and downs of a black urban community” (*Chicago Tribune*).

“Like Sherwood Anderson’s *Winesburg*,* Ohio* or Gloria Naylor’s *The Women of Brewster Place*, *Everyday People* weaves its tale elliptically. . . . O’Nan creates vivid interior worlds, evoking conflicts and joys with astonishing grace and agility.” —*Milwaukee Journal Sentinel*