Goodbye Wisconsin

By Glenway Wescott
With an introduction by Patrick Nathan

October 20, 2026

A collection of stories, originally published in 1928, from the author of The Grandmothers and The Pilgrim Hawk. 

A couple set fire to an old farmhouse to collect insurance money. A groom contemplates an old sexual escapade while he waits for his bride at the altar. A young farm boy returns to tell his brother about his capers while stationed in France in the Navy. The eleven stories in this collection, including an introductory essay by Wescott on returning to his parents’ West Allis home outside Milwaukee, deal with themes of exile—often self-imposed—and return.

This Belt Revivals edition features a new introduction by Patrick Nathan. 

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Glenway Wescott was born in Kewaskum, Wisconsin, in 1901. He published poetry, short stories, essays, and novels, including the internationally acclaimed The Grandmothers (1927) and The Pilgrim Hawk (1940). He was openly gay, and he and his partner, Monroe Wheeler, lived in Europe before returning to the United States and living on a New Jersey farm. He died in 1927. 

Patrick Nathan is the author of Image Control: Social Media, Fascism, and the Dismantling of Democracy (2021) and Some Hell (2018), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. His new novel, The Future Was Color, appeared in June 2024, and was the Los Angeles Review of Books summer book club pick of that year. He also writes Entertainment, Weakly, a Substack newsletter about culture, technology, politics, and art. He lives in Minneapolis.