“Wasp Box is full of wonders, by which I mean it’s full of drunken fathers and the Finger Lakes of New York and middling wineries and too-smart-and-nosy-for-their-own-good kids and bomb shelters and young love and lost love and lost diaries and killer wasps. In this, his unbelievably smart, tense, breakneck first novel, Ockert has made something strange, and great, a book that is absolutely impossible to put down once you’ve started it.”—BROCK CLARKE, author of Exley
“With sentences as darting and sharp as the wasps that haunt this remarkable debut novel, Jason Ockert has crafted an unforgettable vision of an America—and a family—in peril.”—LAURA VAN DEN BERG, author of The Isle of Youth
“Wasp Box may cause swelling, itching, anaphylactic shock, renal failure, barbed terror, stinging empathy, and profound joy.”—BENJAMIN PERCY, author of Red Moon
When a soldier returning home to a small New York town inadvertently transports an invasive species of deadly parasitic wasps, he sets off a frightening chain of events that throws an entire community into an unpredictable crisis. Escalating in its psychological, emotional, and narrative intensity, Ockert’s gripping first novel examines the choices individuals make in the face of danger, the limits of personal strength, and the value of family loyalty when the familiar world unravels.
Praise for Ockert’s previous work:
“Ockert’s voice is quirky, funny, and totally original—it conveys, in these dreamlike, virtuosic stories, a strange and vulnerable kindness you haven’t read before.”—George Saunders, author of Tenth of December
“Beautiful stories, searching and generous. Ockert never ceases to astound.”—Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
“Ockert’s plots are hair-raisingly original, his humor is feverish and dark, his language soars. And yet no matter what altitude of weird Ockert achieves here, his imaginary worlds are always populated by real people, characters who matter deeply to each other, and to their readers.”—Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!
