Jim the Boy is the portrait of a young boy as he takes his first tentative steps toward adulthood in a tiny southern town earlier in this century. He plays baseball, attends a new school, and befriends a rival, all the while measuring himself against the high standards set by his mother and uncles and the long shadows cast by his dead father. Deftly entering the world of this ten-year-old, Earley masterfully explores Jims growing awareness of the complex adult world that shelters him. Alternate selection of Book-of-the-Month-Club and Quality Paperback Club. A portion of Jim the Boy was recently featured in The New Yorkers The Future of American Fiction. Early was on Grantas list of the 20 Best Young American Novelists in 1996. Here We Are in Paradise received outstanding reviews when it was published in 1994. Earlys short stories have won a National Magazine Award for fiction and have been widely anthologized.