Fading Hearts on the River: A Life in High-Stakes Poker

Poet and professor Haxton (Nakedness, Death, and the Number Zero) delivers a thoughtful and gripping memoir of life with his son, Isaac, who takes time off from his undergraduate studies in computer science to pursue a living as a player in the high stakes world of professional poker playing. Beginning in Las Vegas, where Isaac is in the finals of the World Poker Tour, and ending with Isaac’s marriage to his longtime girlfriend, Haxton weaves the events leading to his son’s poker winnings with heartfelt accounts of various earlier times, including Isaac’s youth and his early infatuation. Haxton nicely touches on the mathematics and psychology of poker playing. While recognizing at all times that playing poker in many ways “can be a difficult way of life,” his gift for the poetic and lyrical shines, as he presents highly sympathetic descriptions of the denizens of casinos around the world where the various tournaments he describes are located. (May)