SLOAN, KEE

"This is the story of my continuing education, in different classrooms, with three new teachers: JoJo McCain, John Cahill, and especially and most wonderfully, Beulah Grace Bayer."

"Every time I learn this, the truer it gets: We can only live our lives looking ahead, and we can only understand them looking back."

So says Buddy Hinton, the protagonist of Kee Sloan's mesmerizing debut novel.