Bob the Gambler

Ray and Jewel Kaiser try out the Paradise casino in Biloxi, Mississippi, and their luck as novice gamblers. Curious things happen to them involving, among others, Jewel's fourteen-year-old daughter RV, the casino and its personnel, Ray's dead father, and a mother convinced that a sitcom star is visiting across the street from her house. Tricks of chance make up the fabric of this novel about wising up better late than never. Peopled with dazed casino denizens, a lusty grocery-store manager, body-pierced children, and hourly employees in full revolt, Bob the Gambler tells the refreshing story of a couple who, after tumbling headfirst out of their middle-class Garden of Eden, discover they've landed in an even more fertile garden outside its walls.