From the Back Cover
"Steplings is a tender and deeply touching story that deftly unwinds the tale of an endearing young man's coming-of-age and first love with such pitch-perfect dialogue and engrossing plot that its characters that leap off of the page and into your heart. Steplings is a novel as timeless as it is unforgettable. Sarah Bird, author of How Perfect Is That, The Yokota Officers' Club, and The Gap Year.
"With Steplings, Charlie Smith has flawlessly captured the experience of being young, misunderstood, and full of longing. He manages to craft a tale that is at once gorgeously heartbreaking and a page-turning adventure. His ear for dialogue and lyrical prose are irresistible, as are his complex, loveable Jason and Emily--these aren't characters in a novel, they're people I know. Smith has accomplished that rarest of literary feats: to leave the reader on the final page equal parts exhilarated at having finished a gripping work of fiction, and forlorn at not being able to spend more time in the world he crafted." Melissa Kirsch, author of The Girl's Guide to Absolutely Everything
"Lordy, Steplings is a novel you read with increasing awe and dread, for C.W. Smith, page by page by artful page, is laying bare the illusions by which the American family sustains--and deceives--itself. In the matters of romantic love, marriage, community, school, class, and work, we're in peril, not least from our benighted yearnings for grace and harmony. Mr. Smith has used his great compassion and his enviable gifts as a storyteller without peer to detail what so animated Updike in the Rabbit series of novels: our innocence and our sentimentality for what never was. You won't read a more achingly beautiful book this season." Lee K. Abbott, author of All Things, All at Once: New & Selected Stories
"Steplings touches our hearts with the struggles and failures that are a part of finding our way, whatever our age. With both sensitivity and a strong narrative thrust, the book portrays the tugs between generations, couples, and, most especially those conflicts within ourselves as we come into adulthood, which often takes an entire lifetime. C.W. Smith's deftly written book is compelling on many levels." Kate Lehrer is winner of the Western Heritage Award. Her latest novel is Confessions of a Bigamist.
"Launched with scenes and exchanges of dialogue that are laugh-out-loud funny, C.W. Smith's Steplings maintains the rare wit but sobers up in a hurry. A nineteen-year-old boy, grieving over a first love's broken heart, and his eleven-year-old stepsister, yearning for her prior home and family, take off hitchhiking in the middle of the night and share an adventure that is hair-raising, tender, and wise. Here is an accomplished novelist at the top of his game." Jan Reid, author of Comanche Sundown and The Bullet Meant for Me
C.W. SMITH'S novels are Thin Men of Haddam, Country Music, The Vestal Virgin Room, Buffalo Nickel, Hunter's Trap, Understanding Women, Gabriel's Eye, and Purple Hearts. He has also authored a memoir, Uncle Dad. His short stories have appeared in The Southwest Review, descant, Mademoiselle, Cimarron Review, American Short Fiction, American Literary Review, Sunstone Review, The Missouri Review, Carolina Quarterly, Quartet, and in his story collection, Letters From the Horse Latitudes. Smith is a Dedman Family Distinguished Professor at Southern Methodist University. He belongs to PEN American Center, The Author's Guild, and the Texas Institute of Letters. He was a Dobie-Paisano Fellow at the University of Texas and has received two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. In April 2011, Smith received the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters.
