Clown Shoes - Robert Markowitz

After New York attorney Will Ross gains acquittal for a child abuser and the child is subsequently killed, he resolves to abandon law and become a children's entertainer. Will's change of heart and career is a catalyst for his lover, Clara, who quits her prestigious job to pursue documentary film-making. While the couple are united in their fervor for their nascent careers in art, unexpected challenges rip them apart. Feeling abandoned, Will ventures into his new passion, donning clown shoes, picking up his old guitar, and taking on a special guitar student. Only when the boy's life is threatened does Will take up law again, fighting not only to protect the child, but to clear his guilt and free himself to love.

"I couldn't put Clown Shoes down. It has all the ingredients-redemption, love, second chances. Will and Clara are flawed, engaging characters, whose quests to follow their bliss are poignant and at times hilarious. Markowitz artfully corners the question of whether we really need freedom for ourselves-or from ourselves. If you dig in, you're probably in for a late night!"

-Caren Lissner, author of Carrie Pilby, now a movie starring Bel Powley, Nathan Lane, and Gabriel Byrne

"Clown Shoes, Robert Markowitz's soulful and hilarious debut novel-based on his soulful and hilarious New York Times piece-was prescient in proving the current wisdom of the Zeitgeist that Your Job Won't Love You Back....one man's inspiring reinvention."

-Susan Shapiro, New York Times bestselling author and writing professor

"Clown Shoes beautifully dramatizes the kind of existential crisis so many of us face in middle age. That Robert Markowitz writes with as much aplomb as his floundering protagonist sorely lacks makes this debut novel sometimes heartbreaking, occasionally profound, and often funny as hell."

-Chris Belden, author of Shriver, now a movie, A Little White Lie, starring Kate Hudson and Michael Shannon