Skip Navigation

Seven Stories Press

Works of Radical Imagination

Book cover for Soon the Rest Will Fall
Book cover for Soon the Rest Will FallBook cover for Soon the Rest Will Fall

It seems like everyone in California is going to prison these days. And as another hot Christmas approaches in San Francisco, Robert Grogan and Slatts Calhoun are about to make the street after a stretch in San Quentin. On the inside Robert and Slatts were inmates and lovers, but Robert has a young wife and a daughter on the outside and they're probably not going to be thrilled about sharing him with Slatts. Trouble waits for them in the whitened winter sunlight of the city.

Bleak and magical, afflicted with winos, yuppies, lawyers, tourists, parole officers, drug dealers, and cops, Soon the Rest Will Fall tells a tale of blight, recidivism, and transcendent love. Peter Plate brings us his best work to date—a manic, intensely human, and lyrical portrait of two cons trying to make it in the sweltering holiday madhouse of a three-time losers city by the bay.

Book cover for Soon the Rest Will Fall
Book cover for Soon the Rest Will FallBook cover for Soon the Rest Will Fall

Buying options

“Peter Plate is the bard of San Francisco's jails and residence hotels. Plate's mastery of atmosphere is matched [in Soon the Rest Will Fall] by a remarkable empathy for his characters, whose greatest crimes, inevitably, are perpetrated in their helpless emotional abuse of one another.”

“[Peter Plate is] a master of the omniscient form; he makes his narrative float seamlessly among the characters.”

Peter Plate

PETER PLATE taught himself to write fiction while squatting in abandoned buildings. He is the author of many books, including the novels Police and ThievesAngels of CatastropheElegy Written on a Crowded StreetSoon the Rest Will Fall, and Dirty in Cashmere, all published by Seven Stories Press. In 2004 Plate was named a Literary Laureate of San Francisco, where he lives.