The slip : a novel
(Book)

Austin, Texas: It's the summer of 1998, and Nathaniel Rothstein has vanished without a trace. His uncle Bob Alexander, who was supposed to be looking after him for the summer, had long thought the boy a bit odd, but Nathaniel appeared to be maturing in his sixteenth year -- taking up boxing at Terry Tucker's Boxing Gym and volunteering at the local assisted living center. Until he disappeared, Nathaniel had seemed happier, more confident -- tanner, even. Across the city, Charles Rex, now going by simply "X," has been undergoing a teenage transformation of his own, trolling the phone sex hotline that his mother works day and night, seeking an outlet for everything that feels wrong about his body, looking for intimacy and acceptance in a culture that denies him both. As a surprising and unlikely romance blooms, X feels, for a moment, like he might have found the safety he's been searching for. But it's never that simple. More than a decade later, after Bob Alexander receives a shocking tip, he becomes determined to solve the mystery of his missing nephew. He'll need the help of the eclectic crew down at Terry Tucker's to put the pieces of this always-evolving story back together, including Alexis Cepeda, an up-and-coming lightweight fighter who crossed the US-Mexico border when he was only fourteen, carrying with him a now-errant driver's license bearing the wrong name and face. Bobbing and weaving across the ever-shifting canvas of a changing country, The Slip is an audacious, daring look at sex and race in America that builds to an unforgettable collision in the center of the ring.