The Next Step in the Dance

"A mighty first novel, told with cinematic grip . . . Gautreaux himself takes the next step in the moody, sweet dance of southern literature." —GQ

Bringing the same light and gentle understanding that he did to the story collection Same Place, Same Things, author Tim Gautreaux tells the tale of Paul and Colette, star-crossed and factious lovers struggling to make it in rural south Louisiana. When Colette, fed up with small town life, perceives yet another indiscretion by the fun-loving Paul, she heads for Los Angeles, with big dreams and Paul in tow. Paul's attempts to draw his beautiful young wife back home to the Cajun bayou, and back to his heart, make up a tale filled with warmth, devotion and majestically constructed scenes of Southern life, in The Next Step in the Dance.

"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 . . . [an] A." —Entertainment Weekly
"[What] wins us over is Gautreaux's powerful, often poetic mix of colorful detail and rapid-paced suspense, not to mention his keen ear for Cajun dialect." —The New York Times Book Review
"This is both an elegy for a disappearing way of life and a celebration of enduring values." —The New Orleans Times-Picayune
"An entertaining and immensely likable debut novel, set mostly in Louisiana's southwestern Gulf Stream area . . . As a storyteller, and especially as one with such a good eye for character, Gautreaux looks like one of the best writers to have emerged in the 1990s." —Kirkus Reviews