The Next Step in the Dance A Novel

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 a better life, 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 their home and their 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.

Tim Gautreaux teaches English at Southeastern Louisiana University. His work has appeared in Atlantic Monthly, Harpers, GQ, Story, Best American Short Stories, and New Stories from the South. He is the author of the story collection Same Place, Same Things.

"Gautreaux chronicles the Louisiana landscape with loving precision and insight. Every sound, every smell, is just right . . . This is both an elegy for a disappearing way of life and a celebration of enduring values."—Susan Larson, The New Orleans Times-Picayune

"This is a mighty first novel, told with cinematic grip. With it, Gautreaux himself takes the next step in the moody, sweet dance of Southern literature."—GQ

"A smartly turned-out first novel, about the push and pull between a young Louisiana couple, that holds you snug and won't let go."—Entertainment Weekly