Gates tightens the screws on the mid-life desperation of both Jean and Willis, adroitly capturing the bewilderment of their kids, as Willis's situation grows ever worse. As Willis grows more edgy and erratic, evincing shades of the mental illness that, it is revealed later, destroyed his own father, Jean goes camping with the kids-Roger, nine, and Melanie, 12-only to have Willis show up at their campsite with a gun, provoke an altercation with a park ranger and spend the weekend in jail. Hoping that a two-month hiatus from both his family and his job as the chief PR flack for a beverage company will assuage his unhappiness, Willis plans to renovate the farmhouse, practice on his vintage guitar, mingle with the roughneck locals and plow through the novels of Dickens. Chafing against the boredom of his life in workaday Westchester County, Willis-as Doug is called-has slipped into a fugue of sardonic humor and macho posturing. A visceral journey to the dark side of suburban masculinity and parenthood, Gates's second novel (after Jernigan) opens as Jean and Doug Willis, a couple whose marriage is disintegrating, attempt to spend Labor Day weekend at their farmhouse in the upstate New York town of Preston Falls.
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