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We are pleased to welcome Charles Baxter<\/strong> back to Book Beat on Friday, June 19 from 6:30-8:00 PM.<\/strong> Author of The Feast of Love, Burning Down the House,<\/em> and numerous celebrated novels and story collections. Baxter will read from his work and discuss the art of the writing. His most recent novel Blood Test<\/em>, is out now in paperback. For decades, Baxter has been one of the Midwest’s most distinguished literary voices, a master of the short story who has helped inspire and shape generations of writers through his fiction, essays, and teaching. Baxter will also appear at the St. Clair Shores Lit Walk<\/a> on Saturday, June 20th at 2PM.<\/strong> <\/p>\n From the winner of the PEN\/Malamud Award and “one of our most gifted writers”(Chicago Tribune) comes a comic novel about a divorced Midwestern dad who takes a cutting-edge medical test and learns that he has a predisposition to murder.<\/strong><\/p>\n In this fresh take on love and trouble in America, Brock Hobson, an insurance salesman and Sunday-school teacher, finds his equilibrium disturbed by the results of a predictive blood test. Baxter, a master storyteller, brings us a gradually building rollercoaster narrative, and a protagonist who is impertinent, searching, and hilariously relatable. From his good-as-gold, gentle girlfriend to the macho subcontractor guy his ex-wife left him for, not to mention his well-raised teenage kids, now exploring sex and sexuality, the secondary characters in Brock’s life all contribute meaningfully to the drama, as increasing challenges to his sense of self and purpose crash over him. The final battle\u2014no spoilers, but there is one\u2014couldn’t be more delightful, as this quick and bracing novel reminds us to choose the best people to love, accept the ones we love even if we didn\u2019t choose them, and love them all well.<\/p>\n \u201c[A] quiet masterpiece. . . . The genius of Blood Test is how adroitly Baxter takes the measure of our moment, in all its insanity and perplexing depravity. It is a profound and unsettling\u2014and, yes, frequently funny\u2014snapshot of our current tribulations, cast in relief against the stubborn peculiarities of the American character. Humor is famously subjective but it\u2019s safe to say that, from the start, we\u2019re in practiced and confident hands here.\u201d \u2014The New York Times<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cDelightful. . . . A comic parable about the possibilities, and the perils, of self-transformation.\u201d \u2014The New Yorker<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cOnce you fall under the charm of Brock\u2019s breezy patter, you\u2019re in. . . . the story charges along so boisterously that it\u2019s easy to forget Baxter is batting around some of the weightiest concerns of human experience, from the nature of fate and the boundaries of free will to the power of unconditional love. Fortunately, he remembers the first rule of comic novels: Keep it short. . . . At 77, Baxter is still fearlessly embracing his own zaniness. The narrative voice he creates for Blood Test sounds like an old friend simultaneously touching your heart and pulling your leg.” \u2014The Washington Post<\/em><\/p>\n “In Blood Test, Baxter invites us to laugh at this all-American zaniness and to acknowledge some of the pain that fuels it.” \u2014NPR’s Fresh Air<\/p>\n