The Slip

Set primarily in Austin, Texas, the novel weaves together the lives of more than a dozen characters connected to Terry Tucker's Boxing Gym, spanning from 1998 to 2014. At its center is the disappearance of Nathaniel Rothstein, a sixteen-year-old from Newton, Massachusetts, whose fate is gradually revealed through shifting perspectives and timelines.

The novel opens in August 2008, ten years after Nathaniel vanished. At the gym, Bob Alexander, Nathaniel's sixty-eight-year-old uncle and a retired history professor, finds an anonymous note on his windshield bearing Nathaniel's birthdate. He submits it to the Austin Police Department (APD), expecting nothing. That same morning, Ed Hooley, a vulnerable man who lives in a back room at the gym, discovers a sick coyote hiding inside the building. Ed cares for her overnight and, at dawn, bikes her back to the urban wilds of Shoal Creek. Bob glimpses the bizarre sight from his car but never mentions it.

The narrative shifts to 1998. Nathaniel arrives in Austin for the summer after breaking a classmate's jaw back home. He is pudgy, shy, and friendless. His uncle Bob arranges a volunteer position at the Shoal Creek Rehabilitation Center under David Dalice, a forty-seven-year-old Haitian immigrant who serves as Director of Hospitality. David has spent nearly three decades at the facility, mastering a charming public persona to navigate its historically racist environment. Though warm and capable, he is stagnant in his career and compelled to regale teenage volunteers with fabricated stories of sexual conquest.

Nathaniel is repelled and fascinated by David's confidence. That first evening, he calls a 1-900 phone sex hotline and, unable to express his desires in his own voice, channels David's deep, Caribbean-inflected tone, describing himself as Black. The woman on the line, "Sasha," responds with genuine arousal, and Nathaniel experiences sexual power for the first time. He tells Sasha his name is David, claims to be Haitian, and sustains the persona throughout their escalating daily phone calls.

David begins training Nathaniel at the boxing gym, and the boy transforms. He adopts David's walk, scent, and catchphrases. He tans obsessively with oil, UV beds, and weekend sunbathing. When Sasha proposes they meet in person on August 8, Nathaniel researches how to darken his skin further, discovering that the drug methoxsalen, combined with UV exposure, was once used by the journalist John Howard Griffin to pass as Black for his book Black Like Me.

Dr. Gloria Abruzzi, a retired psychologist and Shoal Creek resident with worsening memory loss, is being treated for psoriasis with methoxsalen. Nathaniel asks about her pills, and Gloria tells David she believes the boy wants to look "more like us." David realizes Nathaniel may be trying to become him. On the eve of August 8, David shaves Nathaniel's head, gives him a stolen Haitian passport, and leaves a vial of Gloria's pills in his work locker. Nathaniel takes them.

The novel then reveals who "Sasha" actually is. Belinda St. James is a forty-one-year-old former men's-magazine model and single mother who works the hotline from her apartment. But it is not Belinda on the line the day Nathaniel first calls. Her sixteen-year-old child, X Markham, born Charles Rex, answers the phone while Belinda is out. X is quietly exploring gender identity, still stinging after a quasi-romance with classmate Jesse Filkins ended in humiliation when Jesse recoiled at the sight of X's body. X, channeling anger at Jesse, berates Nathaniel until he erupts in his deep "David" voice, and both experience a breakthrough. Their daily phone calls continue, and X fully adopts the persona of "Sasha Semyonova." When Belinda announces she will be away on August 8, X invites "David" to the apartment.

Separately, Belinda catches Jesse lurking in the parking lot and instructs him to return on August 8 with tulips to make amends, unaware that X has invited someone else for the same night.

On August 8, David drives to the Shady Creek Condominiums after a bitter argument with Bob that morning. Bob has learned about the stolen pills and reported David, costing him his job. From his parked car, David watches Nathaniel approach the apartment. Jesse arrives with tulips, and the two boys confront each other. Nathaniel, transformed by his summer of training, executes a perfect slip, the defensive boxing move David drilled all summer, and knocks Jesse unconscious. Under the security light, David sees Nathaniel's fully darkened face: The boy looks like a younger version of David himself. In a moment of self-destructive impulse, David calls 911 and reports an assault, describing the attacker as fleeing.

Police arrest the darkened Nathaniel at a nearby Whataburger. His only identification is the expired Haitian passport. Despite his protests, the officers process him as an undocumented Haitian, transfer him to US Marshals, and deport him to Port-au-Prince. There, a sympathetic police lieutenant intervenes and places Nathaniel with a local woman. Nathaniel awakens to the sound of a boxing gym around the corner.

The novel's present-day threads follow the journey of Nathaniel's stolen driver's license. Larry Hooley, Ed's identical twin and a con artist, narrates how he bought the license in 1998 and gave it to a teenage Alexis Cepeda to cross the border into Texas. Alexis became a professional boxer at Terry Tucker's gym. After completing field training as an APD officer, Miriam Lopez begins a romance with Alexis and investigates Nathaniel's cold case. When a witness identifies the license buyer as someone resembling Ed but bearing a carved mark that matches Larry, Miriam deduces Alexis is carrying a missing person's ID. To protect him, she steals the license and plants it on Carlos Ortega, a gym regular departing for Kenya with Felix Barrowman, the gym's top middleweight fighter. Carlos disappears during a storm-battered exhibition fight but mails the license to Bob from Africa with a note: "NEVER TRUST A COP."

Bob, electrified by this evidence after years of inaction, gives the license to Miriam, who quietly buries it. Disillusioned with the police, Bob enrolls repeatedly in the APD's Citizen Police Academy, a fourteen-week community policing course. He recruits three Jewish women from the course and reveals a plan to break into the APD evidence room and burn it down to prevent wrongful convictions. The women are briefly captivated but decline.

In May 2014, the threads converge at a gym watch party for Alexis's world championship fight against Mozart "Socka Doc" Chevalier, a Haitian super lightweight champion. Sasha Markham, formerly X, arrives searching for the "David" of her adolescence. Her therapist, Eileen, one of the three Jewish women, has encouraged her to seek closure. When David Dalice, now sixty-three, arrives, Sasha realizes he is too old to be her caller. David, however, recognizes that Sasha is describing Nathaniel. He shares memories of the boy without revealing the full truth.

On the television, Chevalier enters the arena wearing a Haitian flag as a cape. His entourage performs a distinctive ring walk: two steps forward, one hop back, and clap, the same routine David's crew performed at his own boxing debut in 1973. The novel reveals that Nathaniel Rothstein is Mozart Chevalier. Deported at sixteen, he finds a gym in Port-au-Prince, remakes himself, and rises to become the champion Alexis now challenges. David leans forward, recognizing the echo of his own past. The fight begins.