The Slip

A Novel

By Lucas Schaefer

About The Book

NATIONAL BESTSELLER | WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE | NBCC JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FINALIST

One of The New York Times Book Review's 100 Notable Books of 2025

One of The Washington Post's 10 Best Books of 2025

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.

Reading Group Guide

Unlike many places in America, Terry Tucker’s Boxing Gym isn’t segregated along lines of race and class, geography and gender. At the gym, immigrants from Mexico and the Caribbean work out alongside born-and-bred Austinites, “a jumble of humanity sweating it out as one.” How does the gym’s varied clientele contribute to its success? What tensions arise from the gym’s diversity?

Throughout The Slip, David Dalice makes choices that could, at best, be called ethically questionable, from boasting to his teenage underlings about his alleged sexual experiences to more consequential actions later. Why do you think David behaves as he does? Were you sympathetic to David, and how did your sympathies evolve over the course of the story?

How does Nathaniel’s understanding of race—and particularly the meaning of Blackness—contribute to his actions? Where do you sense this understanding comes from?

Belinda St. James has what at the end of the book is characterized as a “complicated love” for her child, who decides as a teenager to, in Belinda’s sassy estimation, ditch the name she gave him, Charles Rex, and be known simply as X. How would you describe Belinda’s parenting style? Did you understand her approach? Did you agree with it?

In the first half of the “XXX” section of the book, we get to know X through his sort-of-romance with a troubled boy in his class named Jesse Filkins. In the second half, X begins a new sort-of-romance, with life-changing results. What is the link between these two relationships? How is X’s conception of himself tied up in his connection to his suitors?

Who gets to be considered an American, and why, is an issue at the heart of the intersecting immigration plotlines in The Slip. Compare the journeys of Haitian-born David Dalice and Mexican-born Alexis Cepeda. How do their immigration stories have an impact on their lives in the US? Do you think they conceive of themselves as American? Do others?

Much of The Slip takes place in 1998—a time when search engines were still novel, and smartphones nonexistent. How does the time period affect the plot? Do you think the conversations and conflicts concerning race, gender, and sexuality would’ve transpired differently if they were set today?

In “Leonard District,” we spend a year following Miriam Lopez, the police officer investigating Nathaniel’s case a decade after his disappearance. In what ways did Miriam’s experience as a rookie cop conform to or diverge from your expectations?

The Jewish women who attend Citizen Police Academy with Nathaniel’s uncle, Bob Alexander, seem, at first, tangential to the mystery of the boy’s disappearance over a decade earlier. However, it is through these women that the reader learns key details about the cold case. Why do you think the author chose to tell this part of the story from their perspective? What did you make of their evolution over the course of the class?

A slip is a defensive strategy in boxing, but the title could also refer to the many characters who give each other—and sometimes themselves—“the slip.” Which “slip” most surprised you? Most resonated with you? Which characters do you think benefited from their transformations, and which didn’t?

About The Author

Greg Marshall
Lucas Schaefer

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

Product Details

  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster (June 3, 2025)
  • Length: 496 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781668030721

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Raves and Reviews

A Best Book of 2025 from The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, Town & Country, LitHub, Debutiful, Texas Monthly, and CrimeReads

"Schaefer’s narration is wildly, transgressively hilarious, reminiscent of Philip Roth’s early novels...This is a high-wire act, but the breadth of Schaefer’s affection feels as wide as the depth of his comedy."—The Washington Post's 10 Best Books of 2025

"Wildly ambitious and immensely rewarding...Schaefer grants depths of vulnerability to even the novel’s least sympathetic characters...Suffice it to say, you’re unlikely to read a more impressive first novel this year."—The New York Times

"This is a character-based pop novel done right: accessible, unpretentious, hard-hitting...A tremendously strong novel."—The Village Voice

"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

"The book tackles themes of sex and identity beautifully, and Schaefer writes with a self-assurance that’s stylish but not showy. Fans of authors like John Irving, Paul Murray and Nathan Hill will find a whole lot to love in this knockout of a novel."—Michael Schaub, NPR

“It seems only fitting—in a time of political corner-taking and weaponised identity—that the American boxing novel is back...The victories are pyrrhic, the trophies are plastic, and the gym is full of top-shelf weirdos…Norman Mailer would be livid. It’s wonderful…That’s the heretical brilliance of The Slip: it’s not about heroic power, but communal power, a rare space where it’s possible to fight for something real.”—The Monthly

"This one-of-a-kind tale delights."—Publishers Weekly

"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)

"With The Slip, Lucas Schaefer swings big and his aim is true...a damn fine book."—The Fight City

“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
 

Awards and Honors

  • ALA Notable Book

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The Slip

A Novel

By Lucas Schaefer
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