** SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING RENÉE ZELLWEGER, LOUIE ANDERSON AND OWEN TEAGUE **

Former academic Arthur Opp weighs 550 pounds and hasn't left his rambling Brooklyn home in a decade. Twenty miles away, in Yonkers, seventeen-year-old Kel Keller navigates life as the poor kid in a rich school and pins his hopes on what seems like a promising sporting career - if he can untangle himself from his family drama. The link between this unlikely pair is Kel's mother, Charlene, a former student of Arthur's. After nearly two decades of silence, it is Charlene's unexpected phone call to Arthur - a plea for help - that jostles them into action.

Liz Moore is the author of the novelsThe Words of Every Song(2007) andHeft(2012), along with works of short fiction and creative nonfiction that have been published in print and online in venues such asThe New York Times, Tin House, Narrative Magazine, The Tottenville Review,andThe Drum. She is also a professor of writing at Holy Family University in Philadelphia, where she lives..