Excerpt from Escape! by Stephen Fishbach, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Chapter 1

Kent

When the phone rings, Kent Duvall is in the Memorabilia Room watching himself on the reality show Endure. On days when he is feeling his age and the slab of gut hangs like an anchor at his waist, he will pop the disc into his DVD player, which clicks and snaps like an arthritic joint. He doesn't need much. The show's intro features a three-second slow-motion shot of him pounding his chest in the tropical light, hair billowing around his face. God, he had epic hair, long blond locks that in the island's unreasonable humidity looked like they belonged to the lead singer of an eighties metal band. Last year, his wife, Margaret, insisted he shave his head. "You're starting to look like you have a comb-over," she said, walking her conversational tightrope between loving joke and withering insult. He'll watch that three-second clip again and again, rewinding and replaying, rewinding and replaying, and think to himself, That is me.

He still calls it the Memorabilia Room, though most of the memorabilia has been auctioned off on eBay. He argued that they were selling his treasures for much less than they were worth. Margaret said they were only "worth" what someone was willing to pay. What's left behind are the discolorations on the wallpaper to mark where he mounted the dull machete (fifty dollars), the necklace he carved out of driftwood and strung along a circlet of woven grass (seventy-five dollars), and the single set of clothes that he wore throughout the show's forty-five days, which reeked of sweat and woodsmoke even through the pane of protective glass (thirty dollars). The lone piece of memorabilia remaining is a photograph of him holding his one-hundred-thousand-dollar check and smiling into the universe.

Kent pauses the DVD to answer the phone. A woman with the improbable name of Gita Seuss is on the line. She's organizing a charity event, she says in a voice like a cowbell, where former reality television contestants will sign autographs and mingle with paying fans. The signing will benefit ... He misses who exactly it is supposed to benefit.

"I asked the fans who they wanted to see," Gita Seuss is saying, "and your name came up again and again. I said, Kent Duvall? He was on over a decade ago. But your fans love you, with a devotion that transcends time."

Kent rolls his eyes. "I'll need some kind of appearance fee."

"We can pay for your travel and lodging, which is what I've offered all our guests."

"My appearance fee is fifteen hundred dollars."

"This is for charity," she says.

"You have to understand, I get a lot of invitations-"

Gita rattles off a list of other reality TV contestants who will attend. Most are names he doesn't recognize or wishes he didn't. A survivalist from Naked and Afraid, a finalist from The Bachelor, two Amazing Race winners, a longtime participant on MTV's The Challenge. Some are from television shows he's never heard of, shows he isn't even sure exist. Beauty and the Geek. Extreme Pregnancy. But Kent stands firm, and eventually Gita relents.

"The fans really want to see you," she says, the cowbell clanking mournfully.

Fifteen hundred dollars off the top-what will it even matter to the diabetic orphans or homeless pets? Kent was once a mainstay on the reality charity event circuit, and he remains mystified by the economics of these affairs. A few hundred fans pay what-thirty dollars? fifty dollars?-for the privilege of getting drunk with contestants from their favorite shows. Out of that, the event organizer covers airfare and lodging for fifty-some reality stars. What could possibly be left for charity? He imagines Gita Seuss proudly handing an oversize novelty check for $23.57 to a group of confused kids from the children's hospital. But then, he thinks, the economics aren't the point. He and his fellow has-beens can recapture for a few fleeting hours the feeling of being famous; the fans get to fill the void in their lives that can only be filled by the autographs of former reality TV stars; and Gita Seuss can ascend to heaven for her efforts.

Excerpted from Escape! by Stephen Fishbach. Copyright © 2026 by Stephen Fishbach. Excerpted by permission of Dutton. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.