Dance Real Slow

In this luminous debut, Michael Grant Jaffe tells the story of Gordon Nash, a part-time lawyer whose wife abruptly walks away from both marriage and motherhood, leaving Gordon sole responsibility for raising their child, Calvin.

Father and son settle in a small Kansas town, "the very solar plexus of the country," where Calvin dreams of owning a horse someday, and where he displays the quirks and curious habits of a precocious four-year-old: toting around a dead man-o-war in a mason jar, filching disinfectant pucks from urinals, and sleeping on the closet floor.

Though Gordon shows far more love and empathy than his own father, a college basketball coach, ever exhibited toward him, be learns that parenting holds as many frustrations as joys, and involves as much unqualified love as uneasy ambivalence. The delicate balance Gordon achieves in making a life together for Calvin and himself is suddenly jeopardized by the reappearance of his ex-wife, who threatens not only Gordon's relationship with his son but also that with his newfound love, Zoe.