Excerpt from Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

That was why LuEtta Mood bowled, to give people something else to know about her. Joe Wear was right, she brought in gawkers, mostly mannerly, men who came because where else could you see such a good-looking girl dewy with sweat and happiness, and not pay a cent, and not have to go to confession? LuEtta Mood swung around and smiled at the spectators. Then she rolled.

Soon enough she was better than Bertha, and Bertha bought a new machine to stand by the sculptoscope, a combination grip tester and spirometer. See how strong Truitt's hands were, after years of bowling! See how mighty her lungs when she blew into the tube! No woman or man could beat her at the machine, including LuEtta. Let LuEtta bowl. That was fine. Truitt was still a record holder.

Mary, Hazel, and Nora (the poodly one) bowled as though they were delivering the mail, politely, dutifully, inaccurately, but LuEtta Mood rolled so hard and true, you wanted to write a folk song about her.

She did not love bowling—no, she did, she loved it, only this love was inseparable from her love for Bertha Truitt. The fascinating greenness of Bertha Truitt's eyes. That particular smile—not the smirk, which was bonny, but the big beaming smile that seemed both private and magnanimous. Her very peculiar clothing—she always wore the divided skirt, but sometimes she had a divided petticoat beneath shushing and surging as she bowled. The way she called LuEtta by her full name, LuEtta Mood, now LuEtta Mood pay attention to your follow-through, and LuEtta wished she could hear her old name, her real name, in Bertha Truitt's whiskey voice, LuEtta Pickersgill, though even Lu herself knew it wasn't near so lovely.

"But where did you come from?" LuEtta Mood asked her.

"I'm here now," said Truitt, her customary answer.

Dear LuEtta wanted only to assemble Truitt accurately. A born-in-Texas Truitt was different from a born-in-San-Francisco Truitt, a widowed Truitt different from a never-married. Even three years of living one way or the other would sharpen or dull other facts.

One morning when LuEtta turned she saw a stranger, a black man wearing a tweed suit. The tooth of the tweed was dulled by dust, though overall his appearance was neat. His feet were propped up on a canvas bag that looked military but smaller. He read a book too small for his hand, a Bible or instruction manual; he had another book in his breast pocket. A long, curved pipe smoked in his hand. He frowned—no, only his mustache frowned. His actual face was at ease. He gave no indication that he knew he was in a bowling alley. He scratched the corner of his mouth with the stem of his pipe.

"Who's that," LuEtta said warily to Bertha Truitt.

Without looking, Truitt picked up a ball and said, "That gentleman is my husband."

"I mean the colored man," LuEtta clarified.

"Just so," said Bertha. "My husband, Doctor Leviticus Sprague. Dr. Sprague is from the Maritimes."

How could this be? LuEtta had heard the rumors of a husband, but Bertha Truitt was Bertha Truitt, alone on her bicycle, bending the paper to laugh at the Katzenjammer Kids, a singularity. Even when LuEtta dreamt of her, she never imagined interrupting that singularity, never saw the two of them in a kitchen somewhere, sitting on a sofa, sitting on the edge of a bed—nowhere but the bowling alley.

Maybe the man wasn't colored. Maybe the Maritimes were a place where white men were dark, like the Azores, or Sicily.

"Congratuations," LuEtta said. "No, really. When ever did you get married?"

"Sit, Lu," said Truitt irritatedly. Truitt held the ball as though it were an intimate thing she couldn't reckon with as long as someone stood near. LuEtta felt a flare of shame, jaw to cheekbones, at having got her so wrong.

She went right to the man, Truitt's so-called husband.

"I'm LuEtta," she said.

Excerpted from Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken. Copyright © 2019 by Elizabeth McCracken. Excerpted by permission of Ecco. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.