In the heat of summer 1998 in Austin, a 16-year-old boy is coming into his own at a boxing gym. He’s under the tutelage of a Haitian-born ex-fighter.
Then, one night, the boy vanishes.
This is the story that underpins “The Slip,” a new novel out this week by Austin-based author Lucas Schaefer. The novel begins more than a decade after the boy’s disappearance when his Uncle Bob receives a disorienting tip, propelling a new investigation.
The book is chock full of other characters too. A teen on the other side of the city seeking validation for his changing body. A rookie cop determined to prove herself. And a promising lightweight boxer who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border when he was only 14.
Schaefer joined the Texas Standard to talk about the whirlwind story. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: There’s a lot going on in the story. How did all these pieces come to you?
Lucas Schaefer: I first moved to Austin in 2006. I didn’t really know anyone and started going to a boxing gym, which was the initial inspiration for the book and where many of the characters sort of orbit throughout the story.
And part of what really attracted me to the gym was it was one of those rare spaces – really, in America, but in Austin, too – where people of every race and age and personality type and body type and profession were all sort of mixed together. And that really got my mind pumping creatively.
And much of the book came out of thinking about the tensions and the opportunities that can arise when all sorts of different people are suddenly thrust together.
So what did you do to capture Austin in the 1990s and early 2000s? The city has changed so rapidly. What was it like to try and put yourself back in those years?
I didn’t move here until 2006, so I was doing some amount of research. But, you know, as a writer, it’s really fun to go back to that time when, well, there were cell phones, but not to the extent we have now – much more limited internet.
“The Slip” is a mystery. We are trying to figure out what happened to this young boy who disappeared. And so I had a lot of fun with those elements, and then also with just seeing what was in Austin then that’s not there now.
Obviously, the city has changed so much in the last 25 years. So playing with that. And, you know, Austin is a great character, because what do good characters do, right? They change.
This book repeatedly returns to boxing. Why was that the center point you chose to tell the story?
Boxing, to me, is a really interesting sport. And one of the things I really find interesting about boxing is that it’s a little bit more of a meritocracy than a lot of sports. You don’t need as much money to participate initially.
And so for a book that’s really about all of this crossing of worlds, it’s a pretty interesting sport to focus on.
Let’s talk a little bit about the character Charles Rex, who goes by “X”. He calls the phone sex hotline where his mother works to discuss his complicated feelings about sex and intimacy. And without spoiling the plot, what can you say about that storyline and how it fits into the wider tale?
X is a character who is struggling with gender identity. And part of what intrigued me about writing about X is he — and he goes by “he” at the time of the book in 1998 — he’s someone who’s really not been part of any conversations that we are having now about gender identity. So he has really no language at all to think about who he is in relation to gender.
As a writer, that is super, super intriguing to think about and to work on because he’s not on Twitter. He’s not aware of controversies over pronouns or whatever is happening now. He’s just trying to figure it out with really no one around him to help him out.
And that’s sort of where we first meet him and why he starts calling this phone sex hotline to try to come to some understanding of who he is.
With debut novels especially, I think sometimes it’s tempting for readers to try and look for the writer within the story. Do you see yourself in this book or in any of the characters?
It’s funny, I’m white and Jewish, which is the case with Nathaniel, who’s the young man who goes missing. But in a way, the character I relate to more is his Haitian-American mentor, David, who is someone who really is doing pretty well in life.
He has a good job at a nursing home, but is sort of a little bit unsatisfied with his position and feels like maybe he could have had a different life as a boxer. And what’s funny is this book took about 12 years to write. And so when I first started on it, this character of David, I kind of understood on an intellectual level, but I don’t know if emotionally I got him as much.
And as I kept working on the book and kept working on the book, and saw people around me publishing books and I was still kind of slogging away on this, I started to really empathize with him and understand him even more. I’m thinking, “Oh man, I’m like working on this thing and maybe it will never get published. And maybe this particular dream won’t occur.”
He’s someone who really kind of came to life over the course of working on the book.
