Elsewhere

What if the most interesting stories in a city were happening somewhere nobody thought to look?

There's a place on Jones Avenue in San Antonio where two enormous giraffes watch over the entrance, a blue telephone booth promises a direct line to Elsewhere, and the garden seems to have another corner every time you turn around.

People come for the food, the music, and the chance to get away for a while.

But the real stories belong to the people who sit down.

When photographer David Reyes is hired to document Elsewhere, he expects a straightforward assignment. A few weeks behind a camera, a collection of beautiful pictures, and another job finished.

Then he photographs two women celebrating a birthday and discovers why one of them is almost never in the pictures. He watches a handful of strangers turn broken cookie cutters into a world of shadows. He meets an artist who spends hours trying to make a doorway that doesn't lead anywhere, and a musician whose sister has been waiting years to hear him finish a song.

Some of these people have known one another for decades. Others have never met. Their paths cross beneath the jasmine, beside the greenhouse, and along the garden trails, each carrying a life much larger than the few hours they spend there.

And as David keeps returning, something unexpected happens. The assignment ends, but his reasons for coming back don't.

Elsewhere is a novel about the extraordinary things happening in ordinary lives, the stories we carry without realizing it, and the places that somehow become part of who we are.

Inspired by the real Elsewhere Garden Bar in San Antonio, Benjamin Frazier's richly observed novel invites you to pull up a chair, stay longer than you intended, and discover what you might have missed.