“Steplings is a tender and deeply touching story that deftly unwinds the tale of an endearing young man’s coming-of-age and first love with such pitch-perfect dialogue and engrossing plot that its characters that leap off of the page and into your heart. Steplings is a novel as timeless as it is unforgettable. ~Sarah Bird, author of How Perfect Is That, The Yokota Officers’ Club, and The Gap Year.

“With Steplings, Charlie Smith has flawlessly captured the experience of being young, misunderstood, and full of longing. He manages to craft a tale that is at once gorgeously heartbreaking and a page-turning adventure. His ear for dialogue and lyrical prose are irresistible, as are his complex, loveable Jason and Emily—these aren't characters in a novel, they're people I know. Smith has accomplished that rarest of literary feats: to leave the reader on the final page equal parts exhilarated at having finished a gripping work of fiction, and forlorn at not being able to spend more time in the world he crafted.” ~Melissa Kirsch, author of The Girl’s Guide to Absolutely Everything

 “Lordy, Steplings is a novel you read with increasing awe and dread, for C.W. Smith, page by page by artful page, is laying bare the illusions by which the American family sustains—and deceives—itself. In the matters of romantic love, marriage, community, school, class, and work, we're in peril, not least from our benighted yearnings for grace and harmony. Mr. Smith has used his great compassion and his enviable gifts as a storyteller without peer to detail what so animated Updike in the Rabbit series of novels: our innocence and our sentimentality for what never was. You won't read a more achingly beautiful book this season.” ~Lee K. Abbott, author of All Things, All at Once: New & Selected Stories

“Launched with scenes and exchanges of dialogue that are laugh-out-loud funny, C.W. Smith's Steplings maintains the rare wit but sobers up in a hurry. A nineteen-year-old boy, grieving over a first love's broken heart, and his eleven-year-old stepsister, yearning for her prior home and family, take off hitchhiking in the middle of the night and share an adventure that is hair-raising, tender, and wise. Here is an accomplished novelist at the top of his game.” ~Jan Reid, author of Comanche Sundown and The Bullet Meant for Me
TCU Press

 

“Steplings touches our hearts with the struggles and failures that are a part of finding our way, whatever our age. With both sensitivity and a strong narrative thrust, the book portrays the tugs between generations, couples, and, most especially those conflicts within ourselves as we come into adulthood, which often takes an entire lifetime. C.W. Smith's deftly written book is compelling on many levels.” ~Kate Lehrer is winner of the Western Heritage Award. Her latest novel is Confessions of a Bigamist.

A shared road trip creates a bond between two step-siblings, but this inward-looking character study focuses at least as much on their parents.

Mapping a complex web of emotional ties and stress fractures, Smith constructs long paragraphs of rumination and painful flashbacks that move among all the major characters’ points of view (with one significant exception). Exercising a real knack for making poor decisions, 19-year-old dropout Sanborn impulsively sets out one night to hitch from his Dallas suburb to Austin to confront his longtime girlfriend Lisa, who has just sent a “Dear John” letter from college—and finds himself saddled with 11-year-old stepsister Emily, desperate to see her divorced (and philandering) father. Meanwhile, Sanborn’s widowed father Burl and Emily’s mother Lily, both recovering alcoholics, find their sincere efforts to forge a marriage sharply challenged by their children’s unexplained disappearance. The author tucks in complications and minor adventures for all (the young folk are never put into real danger), plus a realistic if poignant resolution, but these only form a backdrop for his exploration of each character’s constellation of strengths and flaws. Self-analytical teen readers who find plenty to ponder in the heads of Sanborn, Burl, Emily and Lisa may be disappointed, though, that the author never gives Emily a fair chance to have her say.

Slow, a little weak in the plot department, but rich in psychological insight and lit by occasional flashes of humor. (Fiction. 15-19, adult).  Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2011