Outlaws

Usually prudent, history professor Jon Marcus has become involved in long-distance affairs with his brother’s wife and his wife’s sister. Compounding Marcus's problems is the fallout, twenty-five years later, from a teenage romance with his cousin. Outlaws is that contradiction in terms, a scintillating dark comedy–erudite, entertaining, and moving–about a subject that's taboo even today.

Marcus's sordid past and messy present might have been a little easier to deal with if he had a real job. But he's a teacher at a liberal arts college in Florida, a school with more than its share of flaky academics. When Jon’s mother is diagnosed with lung cancer, things begin to unravel. Marcus had recently signed on as an advisor to a subversive production of The Magic Flute, and his work on the opera provides a mostly welcome distraction. Jon also volunteers weekends at his local animal shelter, where he walks the dogs that will be euthanized on Monday. He begins doing this more often as the storm clouds gather.

Set in Tampa, Los Angeles, New York, and Las Vegas, and Venice, California, and Venice, Italy, Outlaws is a buoyant, engaging narrative about some of the most dangerous of liaisons. The disgruntled colleagues, eccentric singers, quarrelsome brothers, appealing cousin, and seductive sisters-in-law are rendered with wit and sympathy, and their story is one that readers won't soon forget.