The Slip

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, LitHub, Debutiful, and CrimeReads

For readers of Jonathan Franzen and Nathan Hill comes a haymaker of an American novel about a missing teenage boy, cases of fluid and mistaken identity, and the transformative power of boxing.

Austin, Texas: It’s the summer of 1998, and there’s a new face on the scene at Terry Tucker’s Boxing Gym. Sixteen-year-old Nathaniel Rothstein has never felt comfortable in his own skin, but under the tutelage of a swaggering, Haitian-born ex-fighter named David Dalice, he begins to come into his own. Even the boy’s slightly stoned uncle, Bob Alexander, who is supposed to be watching him for the summer, notices the change. Nathaniel is happier, more confident—tanner, even. Then one night he vanishes, leaving little trace behind.

Across the city, Charles Rex, now going simply by “X,” has been undergoing a teenage transformation of his own, trolling the phone sex hotline that his mother works, 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, Nathaniel’s uncle Bob receives a shocking tip, propelling him to open his own investigation into his nephew’s disappearance. The resulting search involves gymgoers past and present, including a down-on-his-luck twin and his opportunistic brother; a rookie cop determined to prove herself; and Alexis Cepeda, a promising lightweight, who crossed the US-Mexico border when he was only fourteen, carrying with him a 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.

Named A Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, LitHub, Debutiful, and CrimeReads

"A sweaty masterpiece...honestly, I haven’t felt quite like this about a book since I was dazzled by Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections almost 25 years ago. But despite his equally capacious reach, Schaefer is no Franzen wannabe. If anything, he’s looser, confident enough to be sweet, and despite his richly comic voice, this satiric tongue never develops fangs."—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

"Schaefer's writing floats like a butterfly, and I can't wait for the next rounds."— Michael Schaub, NPR

"Schaefer builds us a big, bold, brave, brilliant, beast of a novel. Uproarious and tender, epic in scope and intimate in portraiture, crammed with so many outlandish incidents and exquisitely rendered characters you'll wonder how one novel can possibly contain them all, but Schaefer pulls it off with aplomb. As fearless and enjoyable a debut as you're likely to read this year."—Lit Hub

"Themes of race, class, and identity are portrayed with complex yet nuanced sensitivity. Schaefer brilliantly captures the tumultuous emotional terrain each character must traverse to find themselves. The lyrical prose moves fluidly, like the smoothest heavyweight champion, shimmering, then delivering a knockout punch. Various plot elements nicely serve the deeper themes of fate, found family, preconceived limitations, weighty expectations, and following one’s dreams, all in a rapturous barrage of snappy dialogue, witty rejoinders, and profound observations that make for a wicked combination and a winning bildungsroman."—Booklist (starred review)

"Perhaps not since Nathan Hill’s The Nix (2016) have we seen a debut as hugely ambitious as this one, pulling out all the stops to tell a unique version of the American story. . . Swings for the fences, makes it at least to third. Franzen/Roth/Irving comparisons earned and deserved."—Kirkus (starred review)

“A fascinating novel full of so much life. Lucas Schaefer takes a lapidary eye to these characters and Austin, holding them up to the light and tracing stories only he could tell. I can’t think of another writer like this except maybe Márquez, though I think The Slip is bawdier than his work—and thus, a novel he might have loved.”—Alexander Chee, bestselling author of The Queen of the Night 

“Quite simply, The Slip is everything an epic novel should be, everything you want an epic novel to be: symphonic, expansive, irresistibly engrossing, utterly unpredictable.  It is immense in ambition, bursting with language, dauntless in scope and imagination; an ode to the infinite crossroads of life that lead each soul to its present moment. That this is a debut staggers me.”—Téa Obreht, New York Times bestselling author of The Tiger’s Wife 

"How can a book be uproarious and thought provoking, devil-may-care and philosophical, as full of life in all its ugliness and beauty and strangeness as Lucas Schaefer’s The Slip? Complicated and comic, this is a novel about what it means to long to be otherwise, with a mystery at its heart, as well as love and ruthlessness and the kind of crazy imagination missing lately from American fiction. You may not be ready for it, but this is a book which will grab you by the lapels, the throat, the heart, the hand: everywhere."—Elizabeth McCracken, bestselling author of The Hero of This Book

“With The Slip, Austin, TX finally gets the incisive, warmhearted, epic treatment it deserves. Lucas Schaefer is a master of social detail."—Karan Mahajan, author of National Book Award finalist The Association of Small Bombs

"Lucas Schaefer's debut, The Slip, is a crime novel in the same way it's a boxing novel, a coming-of-age novel, a black comedy, a Greek tragedy, a full-on, Texas-sized haymaker that swings for the tallest American fences and still knocks the ball out of the park. I'm mixing metaphors now, but that's what reading The Slip does to you; it removes all boundaries."—Eli Cranor, Edgar Award-winning author of Broiler

“At once raunchy and tender, dipping into deep pools of hilarity and humanity, Schaefer’s debut is certain to kindle long overdue conversations about race, privilege and what ‘us’ means and should mean in America. This novel bursts with fully-fleshed characters, each a knockout, who will stay with you long after the last, fiery page.”—Parini Shroff, nationally bestselling author of The Bandit Queens 

"Epic in scope and yet so intimate in detail, The Slip is outrageous, tender, and supremely fun to read. Lucas Schaefer’s characters are lost in a funhouse of mirrors, each experiencing a transformation from who we thought they were, each worthy of our love."—Oscar Cásares, author of Where We Come From
 

Lucas Schaefer lives with his family in Austin. The Slip is his first novel.

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