A love story with a literary twist
Sliding
Past Vertical is the story of Sarah Cohen, a young woman who rarely looks
before she leaps, and Emerson McCann, her old college boyfriend, always a phone
call away with a metaphorical mop to help her clean up the mess. To Sarah, now
living in Boston, it’s a comfortable, long-distance relationship. Unless she
thinks about it too long and starts feeling guilty again for breaking his heart
all those years ago. But Emerson’s relationship with her is a little different.
He’d stayed behind in Syracuse and never stopped loving her, even when he could
only watch and offer comfort as she dated loser after loser, even when he
wanted her set upon by the Seven Plagues of Egypt—especially the boils. When
the latest boyfriend du jour puts Sarah in deep trouble, Emerson rushes to her
aid, again, this time with the assistance of his housemate, a graduate student
destined for an arranged marriage. Cleaning up this mess puts Sarah a little
too close for everyone’s comfort when she decides that to correct the crooked
trajectory of her life, she needs to return to Syracuse, where it all started
going wrong. But with Sarah the walking disaster in town, is anyone really
safe?