From the author of the acclaimed story collection Same Place, Same Things comes a novel filled with a rare and affecting sense of tradition and possibility. Paul Thibodeaux is a handsome young man married to Colette, the most beautiful woman in the small Louisiana town where they grew up. For Paul, life is complete: a wife he loves, machines to repair, and a lively local dance hall. But Colette wants more, and when she sets off for California in search of something better, Paul follows her there and back, waiting to see if she’ll change her mind about him and their life together.

How they come to realize the importance of home and marriage makes for a novel that is at once an adventure, a love story, and a moving portrait of a place and a culture rarely explored in contemporary fiction. Tim Gautreaux writes with wit, compassion, and a sharp eye for the details that make us who we are, wherever we are.