No bar is too low for Cammy to shimmy under during the week after her father’s unexpected death. The open question is whether the almost-30 millennial will get it together by the end of Cammy Sitting Shiva, the first novel by Ann Arbor playwright Cary Gitter.

The book follows Cammy’s antics from Queens to River Hill, New Jersey, to a side trip in Atlantic City. Each of her efforts to feel better—or evade her problems—creates new ones. Plus, Cammy had problems before this week because her career as an aspiring writer is far from successful.

From further eroding the trust of her mother to alienating her best friend who tries to help, Cammy tries anything but grieving and comforting her loved ones.

Gitter, whose novel was published in August, will share about his book on a local authors panel along with Clare Kinberg, Henry Hank Greenspan, Jack Zaientz, and Barbara Stark-Nemon. The authors will speak at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Ann Arbor on Thursday, November 20, at 5:30 pm.

Gitter infuses the pages with dramatic language. When Cammy runs into her maybe-not-so-former high school crush, she even imagines herself as a film star:

“Nick,” Cammy said, having crossed the length of the bowling alley to speak to him for the first time in eleven years.

He saw her and stood up from the table where he was sharing a pepperoni pizza with his three companions. “Cammy! Wow. What a—Hi.”

“Hello.” She felt like Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, wandering into Bogart’s nightclub (Rick’s, which rhymed with Nick’s!) to the melancholy music of “As Time Goes By.” Except she and Nick had never been lovers, and a world war hadn’t separated them, but whatever.

They exchanged a brief half hug. She recognized his fresh scent. He still looked good.

“It’s been forever,” he said, seeming sincerely pleased to see her.

“Yeah, it has.”

“How are you? What’re you up to?”

“I’m okay. My dad just died.” Jesus, Cammy, how about a filter?

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks. That’s why I’m home. I mean, I should be at the house sitting shiva with my mom right now”—Did Nick know what shiva was? Probably—“but instead I’m here bowling.”

Cammy embodies the classic millennial mixture of confidence and insecurity, and simultaneously, Gitter leans into the dramatic tension and irony, adding doses of humor to what is supposed to be a week of mourning. Readers have to brace for train wreck after train wreck, but may also delight in Cammy’s eventual repair attempts.

This plot-driven, third-person novel moves quickly and covers a short time span. As Cammy flails, one of her challenges is accepting reality instead of grand ideas of what might happen. When she finds out the news about her father early in the book:

…now seemed like a wonderful time for a cigarette. She went over and asked to bum one. An ethereal person with long, dyed-white hair in a fabulous faux-fur coat lit it for her. Wandering away from the group, she took a drag and exhaled a cloud of smoke. Maybe the smoke contained the secrets of how she should feel and how she should act and what it meant to be newly fatherless. De-fathered. But before she could perceive them, the cloud dissolved into the night air.

The smoke must also clear metaphorically before Cammy can come to terms with recent events and right her own life to pursue what she wants, rather than feeling like a disappointment.

Gitter and I corresponded for this interview by email and discussed the quality of life in Ann Arbor, parallels between writing plays and a novel, the character of Cammy, and what is next.

Q: This is our first time talking. Tell us what it is like for you to live and write in Ann Arbor.
A: I really like Ann Arbor. I moved here from New York City in 2018 because my wife is from Michigan, and it was a big leap for me to relocate from the East Coast, where I was born and raised, to the Midwest. But the fact that Ann Arbor is such a culturally rich university town made the transition a lot easier. And my quality of life improved significantly—I went from a tiny basement apartment in Queens to a house with a backyard—which has been a good thing for my writing. Being in a calmer, quieter place, away from the frenetic hustle-bustle of New York, has afforded me greater mental space and clarity.

Q: You have written several plays and musicals. Cammy Sitting Shiva is your first novel. Why did you switch it up and write in a different genre?
A: I started thinking about writing a novel during the pandemic, when theater wasn’t happening. I’ve always been an avid reader of fiction, but aside from a few short stories, I’d never really given it a shot as a writer. Also, I’d actually written a play version of what became Cammy Sitting Shiva several years earlier, shortly after my own father passed in 2016. That project never went anywhere; the loss was still too fresh for me to express it artistically. But with the benefit of distance and perspective, and the creative free time I had due to the theater hiatus, I felt it was the right moment to revisit my experience of grief and try to transform it into a novel.

Q: Did you employ any techniques from writing plays in writing this novel, and if so, what?
A: Writing dialogue in the novel came very naturally to me because it’s what I’m so accustomed to as a playwright. I’ve also developed a sense of character, conflict, and storytelling structure through my years of work in theater. But there were so many aspects of novel writing that were new to me, too: the ability to delve into a character’s consciousness, to describe the physical reality of places and people, to jump around in time and location in ways that are harder to pull off onstage. These may seem like fairly obvious elements, but as a writer moving from drama to fiction, I felt as if I had a whole new toolkit to work with, which was simultaneously exciting and daunting.

Q: Cammy Sitting Shiva captures the incompatibility of a young adult returning to a childhood home. It is still home in many ways, but Cammy, an aspiring writer who lives in New York City, does not believe she is a successful millennial, which leads her to feeling like she belongs neither here nor there. “‘Giving up is what I do best,’ Cammy said with finality, images of pages from abandoned writing projects flitting through her head.” How does this novel speak to the lives of millennials?
A: I can speak only for myself and my friends, but I think Cammy’s situation represents a couple of common phenomena among millennials. First, many of us were raised to believe we could simply follow our dreams—creative, artistic, etc.—and find success, only to discover that life is much more challenging than that, and the world isn’t necessarily clamoring for our talent. Second, a lot of millennials seem to really “grow up” later than previous generations did; there’s a kind of second coming of age in our late 20s or early 30s when we finally get our act together and become adults. Cammy is caught up in this transitional moment—she’s 29 and adrift, still struggling to find her footing and figure out who she wants to be.

Q: In some ways, this novel is less about shiva, as the title suggests, and more about Cammy’s struggles and growth. Cammy is surprised by the Jewish rituals, such as the first meal after the burial, when everyone brings food. She tells her mother, “No, I thought we’d have some time to like come home and decompress after the cemetery—” but her mother replies, “It’s a tradition.” Did you know from the start that Cammy would participate in very little of the shiva and even openly rebel against it? Why or why not?
A: Yes, I always knew that Cammy would avoid participating in the shiva and would balk at the Jewish mourning rituals. She’s a skeptical, acerbic character at a particularly low point in her life, and she doesn’t know how to deal with the deep pain of losing her father, her favorite person. So rather than face this pain, she tries to run from it, and when others attempt to reach out to her, she bristles and pushes them away. With Cammy’s difficult, often inappropriate behavior, I wanted to portray the messiness of grief—how it can make us act in less than admirable ways, and how we can sometimes feel stifled and frustrated by the very traditions that are supposed to bring us comfort.

Q: The plot follows Cammy through multiple episodes where she does the opposite of what is expected of her—or something plain cringey. At that first meal, she smokes weed with her best friend Fran. She hooks up with more than one acquaintance during the week. She mouths off to the rabbi. I could go on. Was it fun to write her character?
A: It was a lot of fun to write Cammy. I love characters who are flawed and messy, who make mistakes and get themselves into trouble—and she definitely fits the bill. Raw with grief for her father, Cammy doesn’t have a filter and doesn’t care if she acts in the “proper” way. I found it cathartic (and amusing) to have her say and do outrageous things I wouldn’t dare. Even if readers don’t always like Cammy—which is a reaction I’ve heard from some—I hope they’re at least entertained by her antics, and they understand that beneath all her cringeworthy misbehavior lies the hurt, anger, and confusion of loss.

Q: Since you grew up in New Jersey, this setting is one that you know well. Cammy has a love-hate relationship with the place. While she is there, she runs into people, causing her to question, “And what was with all this blast-from-the-past shit, anyway? Officer Rocco, Shane O’Leary, Dr. Strum. Who would pop out of the woodwork next? This was what sucked about being home: the constant reminders of the past, and of how far you hadn’t come since then.” However, her view shifts as she hits rock bottom and is forced to consider what is important to her. What do you think Cammy learns over the course of this novel?
A: The novel spans only a week, but I do think Cammy begins to make some progress by the end. I think she learns to appreciate the place she’s from and the people in it. To not take her mother for granted, and to be kinder to her. I think she learns to be a bit less self-absorbed and also not so hard on herself. And I think she realizes that you don’t have to go through grief and loss alone—it’s OK to be vulnerable and accept support from others who care about you. In other words, Cammy starts to grow up and take baby steps toward becoming an empathetic adult. This, in a way, is her father’s final gift to her.

Q: What is on your coffee table to read?
A: I’m about to be on a debut-fiction panel at the New York Jewish Book Festival, so I’ve been reading two excellent 2025 debut novels by my fellow panelists: Sisters of Fortune by Esther Chehebar, and Boy From the North Country by Sam Sussman. Next up, I’m looking forward to reading another recent debut, Kaplan’s Plot, by Jason Diamond.

Q: Having published plays, musicals, and now a novel, what will you write next?
A: I’m currently working on a second novel and a new musical—details to come on those. In 2026, I’ll have two shows being remounted off-Broadway in New York: a musical called How My Grandparents Fell in Love in the spring, and a play called The Steel Man in the fall. Grandparents is based on the true story of my paternal Jewish grandparents meeting in Poland in the 1930s and immigrating to America, so I’m excited to have such a personal piece reach a wider audience.

Martha Stuit is a former reporter and current librarian. 

Cary Gitter is on a local authors panel along with Clare Kinberg, Henry Hank Greenspan, Jack Zaientz, and Barbara Stark-Nemon at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Ann Arbor, 2935 Birch Hollow Drive, on Thursday, November 20, at 5:30 pm. The event is free, and you can register for it here.