The next step in the dance /

Gautreaux is a fine storyteller, as proved in his collection of short stories Same Place, Same Things (1996). This novel is powered by its characters, mismatched lovers Paul and Colette Thibodeaux. He is a machinist and she is a bank teller. But not all is predictable about the story, for Colette, the supposed brain of the pair, longs to live in L.A. It is a work at once familiar and exotic, and it is delightfully readable.

With an unblinking, cinematographer's eye, Gautreaux captures the southwest Louisiana landscape‘mud, snakes, roadside garbage, cinderblock slabs, bourrée games and all‘in this warm, funny first novel. Paul and Colette Thibordeaux are in their early 20s, living on Tiger Island on the brink of the 1980s oil bust. A fix-all machinist who can do 12 variations of jitterbug, Paul is not ambitious enough for bank teller Colette. Thinking that Paul goes too far with other dance partners and wanting to "examine at least one other place in the world," Colette leaves for California. Paul follows her, and the mishaps begin. Sexual harassment, falsification of papers and other instances of West Coast-style ethics send the Cajun couple back home to more setbacks: pregnancy, divorce, unemployment. The struggle for solvency sets in motion a sequence of breath-stopping misadventures, from Paul's near-death trapped in the boiler of a below-code waste-processing plant to his disappearance on a shrimp trawler in a storm. Gautreaux shows the same affectionate humor (and fascination with machinery) that enriched his short-story collection, Same Place, Same Things. His mastery of the vignette makes for a rhythm of action-packed crises and resolutions that flirts with the picaresque. It never quite surrenders, though: all the semi-happy endings build, fortunately, to a happy one. Author tour. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

An entertaining and immensely likable debut novel, set mostly in Louisiana's southwestern Gulf Stream area, from the talented Gautreaux (stories: Same Place, Same Things, 1996). When beautiful and brainy Colette Jeansomme marries good-looking Paul Thibodeaux (who's also a terrific dancer and the best damn mechanic in the pair's hometown of Tiger Island), their friends are sure it's the perfect match. But Colette tires of her unfulfilling bank teller's job and can't tolerate Paul's enthusiastic participation in the cult of Saturday night fistfighting or his habit of dancing (and, she suspects, enjoying further intimacies) with other women--not to mention his perfect satisfaction with his job (""He has no ambition,"" she complains. ""Fifty years from now he'll still be knee-deep in machine oil""). Threatening divorce, Colette flees to California, followed soon afterward by the contrite yet still feisty Paul. More complications in their stormy relationship, coupled with the inability of each to adapt to West Coast work- and life-styles, send them separately back to Tiger Island and a succession of crises (including Colette's encounter with a cottonmouth moccasin and Paul's perilous adventures both with an overheated boiler and a shrimp boat caught in a storm) that end with the two back where we know they've belonged from the beginning: together, whether they drive each other crazy or not. Though it's more than a little overplotted, Gautreaux's pitch-perfect account of the Thibodeauxes' bumpy road to love is powered by abundant energy and charm and by a townful of vividly rendered supporting characters (Paul's laconic reality instructors, his father and grandfather, lead a memorable parade of locals). And the story is set in a workingman's world that's fully, credibly, and (to the nonmechanical reader) sometimes even confusingly detailed. As a storyteller, and especially as one with such a good eye for character, Gautreaux looks like one of the best writers to have emerged in the 1990s. A fine first novel. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.