First novel about a man badly scarred in Vietnam, and scarred by it, who at last begins recovery. Howard Kapostash can only grunt, so he carries a card explaining his condition: he is of normal intelligence but can't speak, read, or write. His emotional IQ has always lagged behind, however, and his war experiences have aggravated the problem. He's still vaguely in love with his high-school sweetheart, Sylvia, even though her life is one of incompetent motherhood and addiction. When Sylvia's sister forces her into rehab, Howard is pressed into taking care of Sylvia's nine-year-old son, Ryan, a surly, wounded, and uncommunicative child with whom Howard has only a passing relationship. Living with him now, though, in the house where Howard once lived with his own emotionally wounded parents, a father-son relationship begins to grow. They share the house, without intimacy or much cordiality, with a Vietnamese-American soup-maker, Laurel, and with the house painters Steve and Harrison, whom Howard calls Nit and Nat. Howard buys Ryan a baseball glove, takes him to the fights, attends his school play. Gradually, emotional barriers fall, and, as the rehab stretches into to weeks, the five become a family, for the first time caring for one another's well being. Howard, paterfamilias-like, even lends Harrison a suit to attend his father's funeral. Then Sylvia returns, a new lover in tow, and Howard, after years of disappointment and just weeks of hope, is reduced to a bearlike existence. He lashes out at the new couple in an effort to protect his young and his family, violence that brings him a brief sanitarium sojourn. But the tide has turned. Howard slowly regains his humanity, his emotional life begins unfolding, and his newfound family begins to come back together. When he shrugs off the heavy overcoat of writing program metaphors--a ha-ha is a boundary wall concealed in a ditch, it is explained--King will be a writer to watch. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A plot summary of this vibrant first novel may sound depressing, but King handles the story with honesty, skill, and humor. First-person narrator Howard Kapostash is unable to read or to speak coherently, the result of injuries suffered in Vietnam. Now middle-aged and living a low-key life in a large house he inherited from his parents, Howard is still friends with his former high school sweetheart, Sylvia. Before entering a drug rehab program, she entrusts Howard with her nine-year-old son, Ryan, completely upending Howard's lonely, disorganized existence. Also sharing his house are a Texas-raised Vietnamese woman, who runs a catering business, and two freewheeling young house painters. This unlikely family-heretofore all but strangers to one another-becomes a thriving parental unit centered on young Ryan. Everything begins to deteriorate, however, as the mother signals her return, and Howard fights in the only way he knows how to retain ties with Ryan. King writes convincingly from inside Howard, offering entertaining descriptions of the small triumphs and sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic mistakes of a man reaching out to the world from deep inside himself. Recommended for all collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/04; for a Q&A with King, see p. 74.]-Jim Coan, SUNY Coll. at Oneonta (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

King's compelling, compassionate debut revolves around Howie, who suffered a head injury in Vietnam and now can neither speak nor write. When Sylvia, an old girlfriend, asks Howie to care for Ryan, her nine-year-old biracial son, while she goes to a nearby detox center, Howie is initially overwhelmed by his new responsibilities but gradually falls into the role of father: making healthy breakfasts, listening to hip-hop, and signing Ryan up for a Little League team and even filling in as umpire. Howie and his three housemates proudly attend Ryan's end-of-the-year school program, and as the summer progresses, Howie dreads Sylvia's emergence from rehab--he can barely remember life before Ryan. Since his injury Howie has gradually withdrawn from all human contact except for the nuns at the convent where he mows the lawn and his stalwart group of housemates. Caring for Ryan has opened him up again to joy and sorrow, frustration and small accomplishments. The reader is drawn into Howie's world and roots for him with every first step he takes. --Deborah Donovan Copyright 2004 Booklist

Owing to a head injury he suffered 16 days into his Vietnam tour, Howard Kapostash, the narrator of King's graceful, measured debut novel, can neither speak, write nor read. Now middle-aged, Howard lives a lackluster existence in the house where he grew up, along with housemates Laurel, a Vietnamese-American maker of gourmet soups for local restaurants, and two housepainters-essentially interchangeable postcollege jocks-whom he refers to as Nit and Nat. But everything changes when Sylvia, the former girlfriend he's loved since high school, heads to drug rehab, saddling Howard with Ryan, her taciturn nine-year-old son. What happens over the course of the next couple hundred pages will not surprise readers-slowly, Nit and Nat learn responsibility, Laurel discovers her maternal side, Ryan opens up and Howie learns about life and love amid school concerts and Little League games-but it is lovingly rendered in careful, steady prose. Like Michael Cunningham's A Home at the End of the World, the novel explores familial bonds arising between people with no blood ties, and if the novel lingers too long on its notes, thematic and otherwise-Howard often ruminates on the nature of his injury and the things he'd say if he could; his days vary little-it does so with poise and heart. Drama arises with Sylvia's return and Howard nearly loses it, but life and healing are now forever possible. Agent, Kim Goldstein at the Susan Golomb Literary Agency. 3-city author tour. (Jan. 11) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved