Sidewalk Dance

From the author of Glass Bottle Season comes a gritty new coming-of-age novel that examines what happens when one man's desperate journey to become a New York Writer leaves him more "tortured" than "artist."

Sidewalk Danceis a portrait of the artist as a deluded self-saboteur. Haunted by hisbrother's tragic death in the War in Afghanistan and unable to process this trauma,Fisher shuns his elitist pedigree by abruptly quitting Yale Law School, changing hisname to Fish, and moving to New York City. Once there, he sets about reinventinghimself as a doomed playwright. Unfortunately for Fish, he is more of an idealistthan a talent; a dreamer more than a doer. His delusions of grandeur quickly leadhim into an abyss of self-doubt, addiction, identity crisis, and isolation.

The pregnancy of his would-be muse, Madame Meticulous, the debaucheroustendencies of his alter ego, Partiboy, and the impending destruction of the Hell'sKitchen art gallery where he works combine to complicate Fish's pursuit of literarylegacy. His central delusion is that by cloaking himself in the trappings and lifestyle of the tortured artist (hurling his iPhone off the Brooklyn Bridge, smokinghand-rolled cigarettes, growing out his hair, drunkenly clobbering a typewriter lateat night), he will somehow become one. As paternity, unemployment, creativesterility, and romantic abandonment loom, Fish clings to a misguided hope that thestaging of his play will make all well again.