Meet Horace Hopper, a twenty-one-year-old farm hand in Tonopah, Nevada, who works for Mr Reece and his wife, the nearest thing he's had to family in years. But Horace, half-white half-Paiute Indian, dreams of bigger things. Leaving behind the farm and its fragile stability, he heads South to re-invent himself as the Mexican boxer Hector Hidalgo.

Slowly, painfully, the possibility emerges that his dreams might not just be the delusions of a lost soul. but at what cost, and what of those he's left behind? Exploring the fringes of contemporary America, Don't Skip Out on Me is an extraordinary work of compassion - a novel about the need for human connection and understanding - and essential reading, now more than ever.