Adjustments by: Will Willingham By turns thoughtful and hilarious (even, inexplicably, both at the same time), this deeply Midwestern book quietly unfolds a vision for how to navigate in a world where we can’t always resolve things. - BUY BOOK
"Look, Doll," Will said, picking a pebble out of her hair. "Heads don’t just go missing in parking lots. Especially with such a clean neck cut. Your story is safe with me."
  • Will Phillips
  • Adjuster
"Poetry can be a peculiar gateway, Will. It can be a way into all kinds of things that don’t seem to have a way in, or that we don’t even know we want in."
  • Joe Murphy
  • Retired Firefighter
"What the hell ever got done just because a guy decided to overwhelm himself in poetry?"
  • Will Phillips
  • Adjuster
"Mr. Phillips! Are you just getting in for the night? And Lord, have mercy! Where are your pants?"
  • Pearl Jenkins
  • Landlady
"Brooding does not become a man who is not a writer."
  • Joe Murphy
  • Retired Firefighter
"Keats, Mr. Phillips? Am I to believe you were on my roof reading John Keats?"
  • Pearl Jenkins
  • Landlady
the story

Go on a Journey

By turns thoughtful and hilarious (even, inexplicably, both at the same time), this deeply Midwestern book quietly unfolds a vision for how to navigate in a world where we can’t always resolve things.

It begins with an old man’s call to the insurance company to get a minor house repair covered. Once the adjuster shows up, a journey both tender and tough is set in motion. These men need each other in ways it will take time to discover.

To complicate matters, the adjuster also needs (and is needed by) his aged landlady Pearl Jenkins. Theirs is a friendship both fraught and kind.

4482
2048

When the latest “outsider” from Minneapolis shows up to this small Dakotan town, with her non-approved hybrid car parked right across from Pearl’s house, the cast of characters is almost complete.

Just add the generous appearance of colorful minor characters the adjuster works with and serves in his work (none of whom, arguably, are truly minor) and you’re holding a delightfully satisfying book that, while it has you laughing, manages to delve into the ways we bring people in and shut them out—on the job, in the town, or at the threshold of our hearts.

As much as the characters have a relationship with poetry and story (and they do), it is also a profound book about naming both the things that have held us back and the things we want, to move us forward—a book about choosing life.

Read more
About author
Will Willingham

Will Willingham was a claim adjuster for nearly 20 years, helping people and insurance companies understand loss. Now, he trains others to go and do likewise. When he’s not scaling small buildings or crunching numbers with his bare hands, he serves as senior editor for Tweetspeak Poetry and occasionally reads Keats, upside down.

http://Will%20Willingham

my mind has been the most discontented
and restless one that was ever
put into a body too small for it

—john keats

Related Reading About Adjustments in Other Places

On Loving Pearl Jenkins
An Adjuster's Letter to John Keats
Confessions of a Serial Novel Writer
Blog
Contact us
Photo credits: Cover Linda Tanner, House Jan Tik, Prairie Arno Smit.