If Jack's in Love

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Review"The language here is wonderful. . . . downright funny." -School Library Journal ". . . terrific . . . raw and complicated . . . keeps us gripped until the end." -The Daily Beast "Wetta's debut portrays the fictional El Dorado Hills in Virginia during the late 1960s with Southern gothic flair. ... At turns unsparing, tender, and disturbing when it comes to rivalry and the nuances of love versus obligation, this is no typical bildungsroman. That Jack emerges from a crucible determined never to look back is unsurprising; it is the path leading him to this conclusion that is intelligently, wonderfully conceived." -Publisher's Weekly, starred review. "If Jack's in Love is a moving portrait of a specific time, family and town, but also a universal story of growing up and coming to terms with the people-and places-that raise us, told with all the humor, truth and urgency of its teenage hero. It may have taken the first half of his life to write, but Wetta's touching novel was well worth the wait." -BookPage "...[Y]ou should read this wonderfully written marvel of a book: a work both gripping and hilarious, joyous and heartbreakingly bittersweet." -The Wall Street JournalAbout the AuthorA high school dropout, Stephen Wetta grew up in the '60s and '70s, drank, used drugs, got into financial trouble, and spent far too much time reading and writing. He knocked around for years at different jobs, didn't like any of them, and got sober without wanting to. Somehow he wound up with a Ph.D. and worked for ten years as an adjunct. His academic career was singularly undistinguished, and he was eventually hired full-time by a school that couldn't get rid of him. Shortly afterward he was jailed for tax evasion. If Jack's in Love is his first novel.