The Shadow Boxer

This is the story of Sevigne Torrins, poet and boxer, who sets out to make it in the world but whose sexual and professional misadventures take him from a demanding, muscular boyhood on the shores of Lake Superior to the trendy, bohemian life of Toronto and even to Egypt.
In the tradition of such classics as LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL and JUDE THE OBSCURE, THE SHADOW BOXER is that rarest of contemporary performances, an ambitious, unabashedly romantic story about an exposed soul determined to live life to the hilt. Only a writer of Steven Heighton's extraordinary gifts could pull it off with such unsentimental passion and literary grace.

"One of the finest coming-of-age tales of recent years, and a spendid novelistic debut..." -starred Kirkus Reviews

"A remarkably accomplished, potent first novel . . . [written] in a disarmingly natural voice that shifts effortlessly in range." Publishers Weekly, Starred

"Elegantly crafted . . . ably captures the emotional costs of a young man's dream." The Washington Post

"Like a latter-day Holden Caulfield, Torrins rejects the phoniness that surrounds him." Library Journal