The stories in The Man in the Banana Trees take place in the past, present, and future—from the American Gulf South to the orbit around Jupiter. We meet teachers and students, ghosts and aliens. An ice cream consultant in the year 2036 predicts a devastating flavor trend and a disgruntled New England waiter investigates a mysterious tanker crash. Although wildly varied in setting, length, and genre, a thread of the fantastic unites these stories, as characters struggle to understand that thing lurking at the edge of their perception: something sinister, or maybe—miraculous.

Sheffer dips into science fiction and fantasy to defamiliarize everyday horrors and confront them with heart and sly humor. Her stories explore complicity, whiteness, the lack of bodily autonomy that women face, and what we are willing to destroy—or not—to dream a better world for our children.

Cover Image by Jamie Chung, Additional Art Direction by Tierney Oberhammer

“The Man in the Banana Trees kicks ass. Every story is a surprise. The dexterity of Marguerite Sheffer’s prose is absolutely awe-inspiring. By turns heartbreaking and brilliant, Sheffer’s stories remind one of George Saunders and Amy Hempel in their playfulness and their special eye for tragedy.”

—Jamil Jan Kochai, Judge, Iowa Short Fiction Award

“A collection that writes its own miraculous language for the meaning of art and the question of our moral obligation to others. The range here dazzles-- a contemporary ballet stage, a 19th-century artists' colony, a ship full of ghosts, a life stalked by grief in the form of a virtual-reality tiger-- and all these pictures are knit into a single breathtaking view by a sensibility that's both empathetic and unyieldingly keen. The Man in the Banana Trees is a blaze of light, brilliant enough to illuminate not only its characters' interior lives but also the reader's own.

-Clare Beams, Author of The Garden

“Haunting and hilarious, horrifying and heartwarming, The Man in the Banana Trees is a piece of short story gold, and Marguerite Sheffer is the alchemist, reimagining and transmuting the form.”

-John Vercher, Author of Devil is Fine and After the Lights Go Out

"Rarely have I come across ideas as original, prose as exquisite, and hearts as bared on the page as those found in this collection. I am blown away by its achievement. Marguerite Sheffer is extraordinary."

-Julia Phillips, Author of Disappearing Earth and Bear

"The Man in the Banana Trees is a truly remarkable work of literary art and marks the arrival of an absolutely brilliant new storyteller. Marguerite Sheffer is an endlessly inventive writer, but she's also a philosopher capable of drawing metaphor and meaning from the lives of ordinary people trapped in extraordinary circumstances. Following the path of acclaimed writers like Borges, Marquez, Link, Machado, and Claire Keegan, Sheffer promises to provide remarkable stories for many years to come."

- Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Author of The American Daughters

"The Man in the Banana Trees is magnificent. Marguerite Sheffer entrances with stories that are strange, unexpected, and full of imaginative magic. These stories are unbound by time, leaping from a romantically and intellectually entangled trio of researchers in 1960s England who discover the first pulsars to a commodore in purgatory, forced to view his descendants from the belly of his ship. By slanting our reality, Sheffer’s stories ask us to glance anew at our world. Brimming with life, love, loss, and longing, The Man in the Banana Trees is a superb debut."

-Crystal Hana Kim, Author of The Stone Home