All Joe Knight

Kevin Morris goes for a slam dunk in his debut novel about the undoing of an American Dreamer in the Philly suburbs (Vanity Fair Hot Type). 1961. Outside Philadelphia, a soon-to-be father runs into a telephone pole while driving drunk; nine months later, his widow dies in a smashed-up T-Bird. From the start, the orphaned Joe Knight is a blank slate. Taken in by a kindly aunt in a tough-skinned suburb, Joe finds his family in high school with the Fallcrest basketball team. Fast-forward thirty years. Joe is divorced with a daughter and certain he's unfit for love. Ever since selling the ad firm he built from the ground up for millions, he's been wiling away his time at strip clubs to quiet his mind. Then Chris Scully, former Fallcrest teammate-turned DA, tips him off to a criminal probe into the buyout that got Joe rich years ago-a deal he shared with every member of the basketball team, except for Scully. As Joe's possible transgressions unreel, he is forced to face the disillusionment inside himself and a secret that has haunted him for decades. A remarkable and agonizing . . . incendiary look at modern life (Esquire), All Joe Knight features an anti-hero for our times . . . John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom revised for the Trump era-more profane and straight-talking (USA Today, 3/4 stars), a man who achieved the American Dream and is now scrambling to survive it.