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When your first novel has blurbs comparing you to Gary Shteyngart, David Sedaris, Michael Chabon, and Khaled Hosseini, you might reasonably quake in your boots and wonder what your publicist let you in for. Readers might be forgiven for wondering what it is that links those four men, and what it has to do with your book. And given the wild popularity of the last three, don’t you set your readers up for an almost inevitable disappointment? “Aw shucks, it’s not set in Afghanistan.” “Darn, I thought it would be funnier.” Or, “where’s the golem and the comic books?” are just a few of the responses I could imagine coming from readers as they begin Red Weather by Pauls Toutonghi. But in many ways Toutonghi comes through in style with this novel about a family from Latvia who resettles in Milwaukee at the end of the Cold War.

When the shy and quiet 15-year-old Yuri falls in love with one of his classmates, it sets him on a collision course with his father, and leads to some shocking events that will force Yuri to see just how much he and his father care for another. The character who will remain in your mind long after the book is over is Yuri’s father – a janitor at a car dealership who drinks to excess, and more, loves country and western music, and coexists uneasily with the secrets in his past. There are first novel problems here – plot lines left undeveloped, a subplot involving Yuri and his cousin that seems to have been intended for another novel altogether, but Toutonghi’s writing is graceful and his ability to create three-dimensional characters is undeniable. I certainly look forward to reading his second novel.