Meet Horace Hopper, a 21-year-old farm hand in Tonopah, Nevada, who works for Mr Reece and his wife, the nearest thing he’s had to family in years.

But Horace, half-white half-Paiute Indian, dreams of bigger things. Leaving behind the farm and its fragile stability, he heads South to reinvent himself as the Mexican boxer Hector Hidalgo. Slowly, painfully, the possibility emerges that his dreams might not just be the delusions of a lost soul. But at what cost, and what of those he’s left behind?

Exploring the fringes of contemporary America, Don’t Skip Out on Me is an extraordinary work of compassion - a novel about the need for human connection and understanding - and essential listening, now more than ever.