Dear Future Occupants

It is 1979 and patriarch Bud relocates his family to his conservative hometown of Greenhill, Connecticut. Despite dubious restaurant experience, he uses his wife's inheritance to purchase a diner in hopes of proving himself. Things begin to fall apart when police find an all-too-literal skeleton in the family's basement. A series of misfortunes, accidents, and comedic events follow, including the creation of a vending-machine-sandwich/drug-dealing business and a protest-turned-siege at the local hospital.
Charting one family's rise to subversive glory in a genteel New England town, this colonial gothic novel is told through found documents and multiple perspectives, including those of Bud; Victor, the middle son; and Herman, the ahead-of-their time, nonbinary, eldest child whose journal entries serve as a kind of Greek chorus throughout. In this breathless, exuberant work, Keith Stahl brilliantly captures the foundational dichotomies at the heart of the American experience: a puritanical distrust of anything fun and a nearly anarchic love of pleasure and freedom. Moving and bitterly humorous, Dear Future Occupants is a paean to the working class and the diversity that holds a family together.

Part I
The Cabbage Comes to a Head
The Donner Party
The Search for Wade
ASkeleton in the Basement
The Puzzling Story of Oceanus Mathers
Down the Hatch
Braggses
Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato
Nasty Nola
Draw Me
A Brief History of Greenhill—Part 1
The First Congregational Church of Greenhill
Part II
LAV JAM!
The Make Believe Youth Ministry
Through the Glass
Sister
Mr. Bubble
A Brief History of Greenhill—Part 2
Dr. Meana
Visit Greenhill
Child Protective Services
Desire's Lament
Twirl
Osteoarcheology
Dear Future Occupants
The Good Sa-Mouse-itan
Open Mic Nite
Dad's Map
Deep Fried
Not Even a Mouse
Part III
Mr. Sandwich
Ooh That Smell
Trying Times
The Verdict
Dry
Signs
New Beginnings
The Great Escape
The Holey Trinity
Acting Out
Herman Is Risen
Hai-ku-ku
Risen, Indeed!
Epilogue
Acknowledgments