‘Fulfillment’: Author Lee Cole Explores Work, Identity, and the American Search for Meaning
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Asia Tabb
Aired; June 10th, 2025.
Listen to the podcast to hear the full conversation.
Lee Cole’s new novel, Fulfillment, takes readers deep into the warehouses and inner lives of working-class America, telling a story of two half-brothers on diverging paths. The book captures both the physical grind of warehouse labor and the existential weight of trying to find purpose in a chaotic, modern world.
Cole joined The Spark to talk about his inspiration, the emotional terrain of his characters, and the layered meaning behind the book’s title.
Cole’s time working nights at a UPS hub served as the seed for Fulfillment.
“I would always have stories to tell about kind of the weird stuff that came through the warehouse,” Cole said. “I met a lot of interesting characters there, and I just wanted to kind of think about what my life might’ve been like if I hadn’t moved on… What if I had stayed in a job like this?”
That counterfactual scenario—one life diverging from another—evolved into a nuanced portrayal of two half-brothers, Emmett and Joel, navigating wildly different versions of the American Dream.
Though raised in the same family, Emmett and Joel’s lives have gone in opposite directions. Joel is a seemingly successful academic, while Emmett works the night shift at a distribution center and dreams of becoming a screenwriter.
“I liked the idea that two people from a really similar background… could have very different arcs in their lives,” Cole explained. “That was really interesting to me, and I wanted to explore it.”
The novel uses their contrasting perspectives to explore the volatility and randomness of upward mobility in working-class America.
The title Fulfillment carries a dual significance—one emotional, one literal.
“There’s the more kind of banal meaning of the word that we use thinking about like warehouse work where you’re fulfilling orders,” Cole said. “But also… finding fulfillment as a sense of satisfaction or well-being.”
Each character in the novel is seeking their own version of fulfillment: Emmett through artistic ambition, Joel through academia, and Joel’s wife, Alice, through environmental activism and dreams of a self-sufficient life off-grid.
“They’re all sort of unhappy with where they are,” Cole said. “They’re unhappy with their lives. They’re all searching for something better.”
