Town & Country
Brian Schaefer
Atria Books, 2025, $28
We’re living at a time when everything seems politicized, from big issues such as reproductive rights to seemingly insignificant ones, like the redesigned (and since shelved) Cracker Barrel logo. Everything is weaponized, every relationship litmus tested for political compatibility, from relatives to next-door-neighbors. Neutral zones don’t exist—you’re either for something or against it. Brian Schaefer’s debut novel, Town & Country, examines this widening chasm through the filter of a congressional election being contested by two upstate archetypes, both residents of the fictional town of Griffin. Chip, longtime resident and owner of a local bar, the Lucky Buck, and husband to real estate broker Diane, is running against Paul, who recently moved to town with his older, wealthy (and primary donor) husband, Stan.
This particular campaign emerges as a minefield for both candidates. Turns out Diane once fervently opposed same-sex marriage, but the recent wave of often-gay new clients (called “Duffels”) required a change in attitude, at least externally. Add to that, one of her sons, college student Will, is dealing with coming out, while her other son, Joe, is an addict who has stooped to looting the medicine cabinets of friends. Chip’s old friend Gerald runs a failing dairy farm; he has come to blows with Chip, who, in his current post as town supervisor, is leading an effort to install a town sewer system but needs to take, through eminent domain, some of the resistant Gerald’s property in order to do so. Gerald’s son Dalton does the brunt of the farm work, and in his spare time reads Middlemarch and has trysts with Eric, one of the Duffels in an open gay marriage to Alex, an Asian with a cutting wit and one of the book’s more vivid characters.
Some locals resent Paul (also tagged a “Carpetbugger”) for moving to Griffin only a year prior, and for symbolizing the wave of gay men buying old houses and fixing them up. This dreaded gentrification then drives up the price of real estate, sometimes boxing out long-time residents with low incomes like Maren, who tends bar at the Lucky Buck and turns to moonlighting as a drug dealer to make ends meet. Paul’s husband Stan routinely throws lavish pool parties, hiring a local catering company for which Will works on occasion. Will’s on duty at one of Stan’s bacchanals, finally glimpsing an aspirational social scene, and the high life as an openly gay man. Reluctant to reveal himself as the opposition’s son, he adopts a pseudonym.
The book marches through the six months leading up to Election Day, a clever demarcation of chapters and the temporal account of the seasonal upstate environment, and, of course, the ups and downs of election campaigns. A few of the book’s characters act as outsiders looking in (or an insider pulling aside the curtain) such as Celia, a local reporter, and Leon, who not long ago divorced his husband and who lacks youth, wealth, and beauty and must settle for a lackluster apartment and scrounge for last-minute, serendipitous party invitations. At a debate moderated by Celia, accusations fly between the candidates, who begrudgingly realize that all factions contribute to the town’s health, often in a codependent way. Will is accused of betraying his father by working at events for Paul and socializing with his crowd, while his mother Diane has profited nicely off of many real estate sales to the Duffels.
The abundance of gay male characters consolidates as a growing voting bloc, but they’re often defined in stereotypical terms, like wearing bright or pastel colors and Speedos, frolicking at debaucherous pool parties, and ogling one another. In general, the novel has few female characters of depth. Diane, the most prominent woman, has evolved from a cutout judgmental conservative to pragmatic business woman and mother of two sons seeking desperately to find themselves. Through investigative journalism, Celia acts as a social conscience, threatening to reveal secrets. Maren, so close to Chip’s family that she drops in for family dinners, winds up dealing drugs to her friends, in one case resulting in an OD. There are mentions of some stray town characters called the Hummingbird Sisters and the liquor store lesbian.
Some gaps in plausibility raise questions—Will becomes his father’s assistant campaign manager, but there is almost no mention of his job demands in terms of time and public appearances, at odds with the fact that he is also moonlighting as a cater-waiter and social gadabout for the opposition. But through an election season, Schaefer (a part-time resident of Ancram) paints an entertaining picture of a gentrifying community undergoing change—one that dances very close to believable.
This article appears in December 2025.
