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.
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鈥檚 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鈥檛 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鈥檚 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. And will the workers ever be paid enough to buy the organic groceries they shelve?
鈥淛ules 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.鈥濃擪risten Arnett, author, Stop Me If You鈥檝e Heard This One
鈥淎n illuminating, funny, important book about crucial questions with no easy answers, Wernersbach鈥檚 debut explores unionization, wealth disparity, and accountability in capitalism. Starring a lively group of queers . . . Work to Do is a propulsive joy to read鈥擨 loved it.鈥濃擫ydi Conklin, author, Songs of No Provenance
鈥淶ippy, 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.鈥濃擡mma Copley Eisenberg, author, Housemates
鈥淛ules Wernersbach鈥檚 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鈥檚 small crew of employees as they attempt to repair the ruptures鈥攂oth financial and emotional鈥攖hat 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鈥檚 debut is a community unto itself.鈥濃擨sle McElroy, author, People Collide
鈥淭his parable of the Guadalupe Street Co-op is one of the best political novels I鈥檝e 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.鈥濃擩eanne Thornton, author, A/S/L
鈥淲ernersbach鈥檚 depiction of their large, diverse, economically struggling cast of characters gives even the minor players their full humanity and their evocation of the Austin setting sparkles with verisimilitude, right down to the very affordable pitcher of Lone Star at the Spider House Caf茅. A workplace novel crossed with a soap opera, offering plenty of food for thought. (Organic and locally sourced, of course.)鈥濃Kirkus Reviews
鈥淭his remarkable debut tells the tale of the inner workings of the Austin, Texas Guadalupe Street Co-op. . . . the novel emerges as a whirlwind of jealousy, passion, errors in judgment, and strained friendship in various states of disrepair. Wernersbach is masterful at juggling all these storylines as they present Austin as a character itself in all its bohemian, hipster, eclectic glory.鈥濃The Bay Area Reporter
鈥淚鈥檓 stoked for this novel by one of the best booksellers in the nation: Jules Wernersbach. Work to Do merges their long experience working crushing hours for local businesses on the cusp of unionization with the real-life saga of grocery cooperative workers fighting to earn a living wage. There鈥檚 a special kind of hell that comes from being exploited at a Cool Job鈥攅specially, in Austin, at a Cool Local Job. . . . I鈥檓 hoping the scrappy grocery workers at the heart of the novel achieve all their collective bargaining dreams!鈥濃擬olly Odintz, CrimeReads Managing Editor
鈥淲ork to Do is . . . grounded in a working-class solidarity that is evidenced by Wernersbach鈥檚 attention to the details of work . . . and different characters鈥 class-informed attitudes toward money and labor. It鈥檚 exciting to read a queer novel that takes the realities of retail work and union-organizing just as seriously as it does the highs and lows of sex and dating.鈥濃擧 Felix Chau Bradley, Xtra Magazine
