Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Acclaimed author Torrey Peters returns with a daring, innovative follow-up to her celebrated debut, Detransition, Baby, offering another powerful exploration of gender politics, identity, and life at the social margins.

Praised by bestselling author Miranda July as “hot, heartbreaking, and thrillingly victorious,” Stag Dance includes the captivating title novel along with three additional short stories. Peters, hailed by People magazine for masterfully capturing “gender, transness and lives on the margins in all of their gorgeously complicated glory,” once again challenges boundaries and expectations in contemporary literature.

In the central novel, Stag Dance, a crew of restless lumberjacks running an illegal logging operation during a harsh winter plan an unusual dance party, with volunteers stepping forward to attend in the roles of women. When the toughest, strongest, and most rugged of the crew surprises everyone by declaring he’ll embrace femininity, intense competition erupts between him and a younger, more delicate lumberjack, sparking an escalating spiral of obsession, jealousy, and betrayal that culminates in a startling, revelatory finale about gender and identity.

Surrounding this novel are three provocative short stories that dive deep into unexpected corners of desire and community. “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones” imagines a gender-based apocalypse triggered by an unpredictable ex-girlfriend, while “The Chaser” uncovers secrecy, passion, and cruelty through hidden romance at a Quaker boarding school. Finally, “The Masker” explores a scandalous weekend getaway on the Las Vegas strip, where a young crossdresser is torn between two compelling guides—an alluring mystery man whose objectifying desire is intensely thrilling, or an experienced, jaded trans woman who offers gritty solidarity and sisterhood.

Marked by Peters’s wicked humor, emotional depth, and compelling inventiveness reminiscent of George Saunders and Jennifer Egan, Stag Dance is a provocative, unsettling, and utterly mesmerizing exploration of gender, communities at the margins, and the vibrant complexity of human connection.