Straight White Male

Leroy Upton, the "straight white male" who is the novel s central character, has come a long way from the sun-baked working-class neighborhood in Bakersfield where he grew up. The son of an oil-field laborer, Leroy is now a professor at a small college in Northern California. He is happily married, has three much-loved children, and close friends who share his memories and success.But life is about to deliver a series of challenges that overturn Leroy s hard-won serenity and threaten to destroy his marriage and his family. Leroy s father, Earl, once so wise and invincible, is descending into the empty, helpless depths of senility, while his ill-tempered mother struggles with her own health problems. The marriage of a high school friend ends tragically. And Leroy wrestles with his own bitter secret his fierce resentment of his beloved wife s troubled past and of the other men who knew her before he married her."