Nineteen-year-old Jason is lost. The rush of graduation parties
has subsided, the ubiquitous discussion of college departures
dimmed to a dull roar. His former classmates have made elaborate
plans, but the only date on Jason's calendar is a court appearance
next Monday. Jason, who dropped out of high school just two months
shy of graduation, finds himself stuck in the well-worn grooves of
his hometown. But when his over-achieving girlfriend Lisa departs
for UT Austin to study medicine, Jason finds Mesquite a place he
can hardly recognize.
Jason's family can offer him little direction. After his mother
Sue's unexpected death a few years back, his father Burl, fifteen
years sober, slipped into old drinking habits. Jason watched the
once clockwork-perfect routine of his family life descend into
chaos. When Burl marries Lily, a high-strung, high-powered
attorney, she brings a daughter into the house: Emily, eleven years
old and a self-described know-it-all whose very existence is enough
to irritate Jason.
Three days before Jason must appear in court, he receives a
"Dear John" letter from Lisa. Heartbroken and determined to
convince Lisa of his worth, Jason decides to hitchhike to Lisa's
dorm in Austin--but Emily, desperate to return to her father, a UT
professor, overhears Jason's plans and demands to accompany him.
When Burl and Lily return home to find their children missing, Lily
puts out an Amber Alert for Emily, accusing Jason of abducting her
daughter. The frantic search effort that ensues threatens to
destroy the tentative household that Burl and Lily have just begun
to establish.
Smith's gift for creating three-dimensional characters,
abundantly demonstrated in his previous TCU Press titles including
"Understanding Women" and "Purple Hearts," lends this coming-of-age
tale an unexpected quality of honesty and sophisticated narrative
rarely seen in contemporary young adult fiction. Mary Powell,
author of the TCU Press books "Auslander" and "Galveston Rose,"
describes Smith's prose as "rich and sophisticated, yet accessible,
and the dialogue is right on." "Steplings" doesn't romanticize the
misadventures of its protagonists. Though Jason and Emily grapple
with universal teen issues--Emily searches for acceptance in her
new middle school, while Jason balks when confronted with new adult
responsibilities--their troubles feel like uncharted territory when
expressed through pitch-perfect narrative voices. "Watching Jason
self-destruct," according to Powell, "is akin to watching someone
in a horror film go down into the basement."
The authentic quality of Smith's prose extends to the Texas
setting; readers will recognize their neighbors in the characters
that populate Mesquite and Austin. Kate Lehrer observed that Smith
also "draws subtle distinctions among social classes." Smith
invokes tension between Jason's no-frills lifestyle and Lisa's
country-club upbringing, and paints a widening gulf between Burl's
small-town mannerisms and Lily's cosmopolitan tastes.
Powell called "Steplings" "a friendly, hopeful, humorous, and
thoughtful book about growing up." Growing up, however, doesn't
belong exclusively to the young, and "Steplings" is a story that
can't be shelved neatly in the young adult category. Both teen and
adult readers will see themselves in this multifaceted narrative of
self-discovery.
General
Imprint: |
Texas Christian University Press,U.S.
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
October 2011 |
First published: |
September 2011 |
Authors: |
C.W. Smith
|
Dimensions: |
152 x 152 x 26mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Hardcover - Cloth over boards
|
Pages: |
272 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-87565-437-9 |
Categories: |
Books >
Fiction >
General & literary fiction >
Modern fiction
|
LSN: |
0-87565-437-1 |
Barcode: |
9780875654379 |
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