When Eleanor founded Guadalupe Street Co-op in the early 1980s, she was in her mid-twenties and madly in love with her girlfriend, Meg. Together, they envisioned an idyllic grocery store owned by its workers and customers. But after only a year, Meg bolted, leaving Eleanor with a floundering business and an angry, unhealing wound.
Forty years later, Guadalupe Street Co-op is an iconic Austin business with a loyal customer base, an antiquated business model, and a disgruntled staff. Roz, one of the store’s senior managers, is too caught up stalking her ex-wife online to notice that her girlfriend, Molly, is plotting with her coworkers to unionize. Roz also doesn’t see that Molly is not-so-secretly in a situationship with Randy, the dairy manager leading their collective.
Unfolding over the course of a single week during Texas hurricane season, Work to Do pings between the co-op’s first year and present day, as the unionization bid reaches fever pitch. The wind howls, the power goes out, and water creeps through the front door, as questions of who owns the grocery store and who has a right to its future are posed. Will the workers ever be paid enough to buy the organic groceries they shelve?
“Jules Wernersbach has crafted something beautiful with Work to Do. It is a gorgeous, deeply tender first novel that catalogs the fits and starts, the mess, and all of the joy that comprises the human condition. A book about trying, failing, and then trying again; I found myself instantly smitten with the characters. A true pleasure.”—Kristen Arnett, author, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One
“An illuminating, funny, important book about crucial questions with no easy answers, Wernersbach’s debut explores unionization, wealth disparity, and accountability in capitalism. Starring a lively group of queers . . . Work to Do is a propulsive joy to read—I loved it.”—Lydi Conklin, author, Songs of No Provenance
“Zippy, fresh, propulsive, and tender, this is a gorgeous book about the unexpected shapes that life makes and what happens when we make the old ones new again. The best story about a co-op grocery store since that episode of Broad City.”—Emma Copley Eisenberg, author, Housemates
“Jules Wernersbach’s Work to Do captures the complicated and absurd frustrations of making something that matters. Centering on one hectic week at a co-op in Austin, the novel moves through the store’s small crew of employees as they attempt to repair the ruptures—both financial and emotional—that threaten to put the co-op out of business. This funny, heartfelt novel asks how anyone might live authentically in a world that tries to turn everything into a profit. Wernersbach’s debut is a community unto itself.”—Isle McElroy, author, People Collide
“This parable of the Guadalupe Street Co-op is one of the best political novels I’ve read in years. Holding back judgment, the novel lets these characters, with their messy pasts, self-concepts, and the financial conditions that bind them, play out with empathy and urgency against summer storms and mesquite-smoked charms.”—Jeanne Thornton, author, A/S/L
