Bluestown

In the first chapter of Bluestown - which as a short story appeared in the 1995 Drue Heinz Prize-winning collection Dangerous Men - Geoffrey Becker emerges as a writer of unusual imagination and talent. Spencer Markus at fifteen wants to believe in his dad, Spider, a local musician whose life and career seem to be going nowhere. So when his dad shows up and pulls Spencer from school one afternoon, inviting him on a road trip, he is eager to go along. But the trip turns out to be Spider's strange way of saying good-bye, rather than facing up to the lies he's told, both to his son and to…