Steplings

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 Jasons 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.  

Jasons family can offer him little direction.  After his mother Sues 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 Lisas dorm in Austinbut Emily, desperate to return to her father, a UT professor, overhears Jasons 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.

Smiths 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 Smiths prose as rich and sophisticated, yet accessible, and the dialogue is right on.  Steplings doesnt romanticize the misadventures of its protagonists. Though Jason and Emily grapple with universal teen issuesEmily searches for acceptance in her new middle school, while Jason balks when confronted with new adult responsibilitiestheir 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 Smiths 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 Jasons no-frills lifestyle and Lisas country-club upbringing, and paints a widening gulf between Burls small-town mannerisms and Lilys cosmopolitan tastes.  

Powell called Steplings a friendly, hopeful, humorous, and thoughtful book about growing up. Growing up, however, doesnt belong exclusively to the young, and Steplings is a story that cant be shelved neatly in the young adult category. Both teen and adult readers will see themselves in this multifaceted narrative of self-discovery.