Donald Geary, a freelance copywriter on a failed business trip, pockets a flash drive left in a hotel bar. Compelled by the drive's mysterious contents and a sense his career has stalled out, Geary changes his travel plans in order to return the item personally. What begins as curiosity, however, leads to mistaken identity, and he soon finds himself caught in an escalating game of cat and mouse that ensnares family and friends as it winds its way through the city streets and forest roads of the Pacific Northwest.
"It has always been important to you to do good work. Is that what you're doing?"
This question hangs over many of the novel's characters, and is faced most acutely by Leah, Geary's longtime partner. She feels the same desire to find a meaningful next chapter in life, while still committed to her role as a parent. And she knows that men discouraged by the repetitions of work and family life are far from the only people searching for meaning in twenty-first century America.
Moving from the cold height of the Space Needle to the rocky surf of the Oregon coast, Double Standard weaves a fast-paced thriller into a novel of treachery and surveillance, the limits of identity, and the maddening fact that though we live just once, we do so while imagining innumerable possible lives.
About the Author :
Dan DeWeese is the author of the Oregon Book Award-nominated novel You Don't Love This Man. His story collection, Disorder, was the inaugural title of the Oregon Book Club, and his novel Gielgud was a small-press bestseller. His fiction has appeared in publications including Tin House, New England Review, and The Normal School. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Review :
Praise for the novels of Dan DeWeese
"There are no goofy Portlandia moments here; rather, Gielgud comes across as a reality check for those who think the city's been all but taken over by carefree creatives." -Amy Wang, The Oregonian
"Living with [this] protagonist took me through panic and despair to kinship and catharsis-such is a year in the life of Don Geary, who doesn't make anything easy on himself." -Brian Juenemann, Eugene Register-Guard
"You Don't Love This Man is an exquisite puzzle...This remarkable novel gives rise to another, purely pleasurable conundrum. Which is more gorgeous, more satisfying here, the story itself, or the language DeWeese uses to tell it?" -Mary Rechner, author of Marrying Friends
"Oddly tense and ultimately, cleansingly sad, You Don't Love This Man wrings an amazing amount of pathos out of one (only seemingly) ordinary life." -Tom Bissell, author of The Disaster Artist
