HOW TO STAY MARRIED

From Harrison Scott Key, winner of the 2016 Thurber Prize for American Humor, How to Stay Married is a shockingly candid, hilarious, voyeuristic, and inspiring account of one man's personal journey through hell and back when his wife's infidelity threatens their marriage.

One gorgeous autumn day, Harrison discovers that Lauren, his churchgoing wife of 14 years, is having an affair with a family friend. This revelation propels the hilarious, heartbreaking action of How to Stay Married, sending our narrator on a journey from heaven to hell and back again. She wants to leave their family and marry this man, she says. But why? How could his wife burn it all down and walk away?

Harrison faces an onslaught of terrible choices: Kick her out and set fire to her clothes in the yard? Beat this other man to death with a shovel? Win back his wife? How do you fight for a woman who hoped for many years that you would die in a tragic bicycle accident? What to make of his wife's alleged belief in a God and a Christian faith where infidelity constituted one of the highest crimes imaginable?

Armed with little but a sense of humor and a hunger for the truth, Harrison embarks on a hellish pilgrimage into his past, seeking answers to the riddles of faith, doubt, and forgiveness. Through an absurd series of escalating confessions and betrayals that would drive most people insane with rage, Harrison fights for his wife and his family and, in a climax almost too ridiculous to be believed, finally learns that love is no joke. How to Stay Married is a comic romp through the mysteries of love, betrayal, mercy, and redemption.

Key is the author of The World's Largest Man, winner of the 2016 Thurber Prize for American Humor, and Congratulations, Who Are You, Again?. In 2019, Harrison delivered a TEDx talk about the limitations and challenges of following one's creative ambition ("The Funny Thing About the American Dream"), which has since been featured on TED.com and has earned approximately 100K views. His humor and nonfiction have appeared in The Best American Travel Writing, Oxford American, Outside, The New York Times, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Town & Country, The Mockingbird, Salon, Reader's Digest, Image, Southern Living, Gulf Coast, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. He has performed his work for live audiences and radio, including a story adapted for Snap Judgement (WNYC Studios), and has spoken and performed at more than 200 book festivals, bookstores, conferences, variety shows, and universities. He lives in Savannah, Georgia.