As if negotiating the rapids of being 13 weren’t hard enough, the young hero of Yates Paul, His Grand Flights, His Tootings must also contend with the absence of his mother, whose death no one will talk to him about; his photographer father’s mysterious nighttime activities; and some twisted relationships and deep, dark secrets within the rest of the family. But in his father’s studio darkroom, he inhabits a world where he alone is in charge. And in a series of fantastic daydreams, he creates yet another world in which he accomplishes heroic deeds and wins the love of the woman of his dreams.

Both disturbing and hilarious, Yates Paul was the first published work for James Baker Hall, written when the author was 27. Hall has since become better known as a poet—he was named Kentucky’s Poet Laureate in 2001—and is an accomplished photographer. The novel reflects the poet’s playfulness with language, the photographer’s knowledge of darkroom techniques, and the artist’s reverence for the act of creation. Set in Hall’s hometown of Lexington (in his foreword, Ed McClanahan calls it “the quintessential Lexington novel”), it was published in 1963 to good reviews but poor distribution, neglected for decades, and then reprinted as something of a rediscovered classic in 2002.