Fireworks Every Night

Raymer’s lively if meandering debut novel (after the memoir Lay the Favorite) follows the ups and downs of a dysfunctional Florida family in the 1990s. Wayward patriarch Calvis Borkoski moves the family from Ohio to Loxahatchee, Fla., where he’s convinced there are greater opportunities. While things seem good at first, with a newly built house and pool, the family fractures after Calvis’s wife, Mary Kay, has an affair. At the center is youngest daughter, C.C., who does her best to lose herself in basketball but is pulled back by family dramas, which grow more dire after Calvis spends all their money. When the oldest child leaves, C.C. is caught in the middle of a violent struggle between her parents. Woven through C.C.’s coming-of-age are scenes with her as an adult, married to a man from a well-off family who leaves her feeling “gentrified” (“You buy one fifty- three-hundred-dollar dresser and before you know it it’s spawned seventeen-hundred-dollar nightstands and a six-thousand-dollar headboard for a bed that you’re not fucking in anymore”). While there isn’t much momentum, Raymer impresses with heart-rending characters and clear-eyed exploration of class differences. Though it’s a little messy, there’s a great deal of life on the page. Agent: Andrew Blauner, Blauner Books Literary Agency. (June)