The Hitch -- Sara Levine, Hardcover

"A wonderful storyteller with a vibrant voice."--New York Times

From the author of the cult classic Treasure Island!!!, a delightfully unhinged comedy following a woman as she attempts to exorcise the spirit of a dead corgi from her nephew and renegotiate the borders of her previously rational world

Rose Cutler defines herself by her exacting standards. As an anti-racist, Jewish secular feminist eco-warrior, she is convinced she knows the right way to do everything, including parent her six-year-old nephew Nathan. When Rose offers to look after him while his parents visit Mexico for a week, her brother and sister-in-law reluctantly agree, provided she understands the rules--routine, bedtime, homework--and doesn't overstep. But when Rose's Newfoundland attacks and kills a corgi at the park, Nathan starts acting strangely: barking, overeating, talking to himself. Rose mistakes this behavior as repressed grief over the corgi's death, but Nathan insists he isn't grieving, and the dog isn't dead. Her soul leaped into his body, and now she's living inside him. Now Rose must banish the corgi from her nephew before the week ends and his parents return to collect their child.

With the ferocious absurdity of Rachel Yoder's Nightbitch and the dark, brazen humor of Melissa Broder's Death Valley, The Hitch is a tantalizingly bizarre novel about loneliness, bad boundaries, and the ill-fated strategy of micromanaging everything and everyone around you.

Author: Sara Levine
Publisher: Roxane Gay Books
Published: 01/13/2026
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Hardcover
ISBN: 9780802165923

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 10/13/2025

About the Author
Sara Levine is the author of the novel Treasure Island!!! and the short story collection Short Dark Oracles. Her essays, stories, and aphorisms have appeared in various magazines including The Iowa Review, Nerve, Conjunctions, Necessary Fiction, Sonora Review, and others. She holds a PhD in English from Brown University and teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She lives in Chicago, IL.