The Man Who Loved Levittown

This book is characterized by narrative vitality and emotional range. In Wetherell's stories a suburban retiree's assumptions about the ethos of Long Island life are challenged and dismissed by a younger generation, a young English woman achieves miracles by dancing with wounded soldiers during World War II, a tennis-mad bachelor plays an interior game as real to him as an actual match, and a black drifter converts an Asian couple to his bleak vision of American life and finds strange kinship with them.

W. D. Wetherell has published a novel, Souvenirs, and a book of essays, Vermont River. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in many national magazines, newspapers, and anthologies. He has twice won O. Henry Awards and has been awarded an NEA fellowship in fiction.