The Next Step in the Dance - Tapa dura

'[It] may tell an old, old story - that it is only when you are in danger of losing someone that you begin truly to appreciate them - but it has rarely been told so well ... the depiction of his native landscape, with its Spanish moss and snapping turtles, its "white heat and green humidity" is superb.' -- Mark Sanderson, Sunday Telegraph 'A mighty first novel, told with cinematic grip ... Gautreaux himself takes the next step in the moody, sweet dance of southern literature.' -- GQ 'A smartly turned-out first novel, about the push and pull of a young Louisiana couple, that holds you snug and won't let go' -- Entertainment Weekly 'Marries the power of a first novel with the wisdom of a second ... The rippingest novel of the year, with writing that dances and swells like a jitterbug on a hot skillet.' -- Philadelphia Enquirer 'Gautreaux chronicles the Louisiana landscape with loving precision and insight. Every sound, every smell, is just right ... This is both an elegy for a disappearing way of life and a celebration of enduring values.' -- New Orleans Times-Picayune

Paul Thibodeaux is a handsome, laid-back young man married to Colette, the most beautiful woman in the small Louisiana town where they grew up. For Paul, life is complete, with a wife he loves, machines to repair, and a lively local dance hall. But Colette wants more, and when she sets off for California in search of a better life, Paul follows her there and back, waiting to see if she'll change her mind about him and their life together. How they come to realize the importance of their marriage makes for a novel that is at once an adventure story, a love story, and an elegiac portrait of a place and a culture rarely explored in contemporary fiction.