New York, NY: W.W. Norton (1999)

Fine First Edition. Signed on title page.

"When I was thirty-five and freshly separated and still a stouthearted pilgrim to myself, I took a job on the Gulf Coast swindling people. I sold fake trailer lot deeds to investors with souls more crooked than my own." This is the voice of Richard, the winning and irrepressible narrator of this novel in stories. Here, we follow Richard's chaotic childhood informed by his parents' passionate and rocky marriage, his mother's nervous breakdowns, his traveling salesman father's erratic attempts to earn his mother's love again, and their eventual divorce, through Richard's own trials with the women in his life.