Excerpt from The Dinosaur Artist by Paige Williams, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Every few minutes, Eric stepped away to pace the sand with his Blackberry to his ear, increasingly anxious about the news from New York. He should have felt relaxed by the break of the surf and the opportunity to search the shoreline for washed-up treasure, as he had loved to do since childhood, but to be distracted and stressed was to miss these pleasures even while enacting them.

The competing tensions, years in accrual, were beginning to show on his body. His eyes, brown as acorns, were bracketed by deepening crow's-feet. His right eye had developed an inflamed twitch. His dark hair sprouted silver like crabgrass after a dense rain. His enormous hands—bratwurst fingers, saucer palms—were callused and nicked. Amanda told friends that Eric worked so hard, she practically had to prop him up to make him eat. The kids barely saw him anymore. Until recently he had never been a drinker, but now he needed the dulling effect of at least one vodka cocktail before he could sleep. When working on big projects he might come to bed at four in the morning or not all.

Late at night, Amanda could step to a rear window of their house, Serenola, and look out at the huge prefabricated workshop they had recently installed in the backyard—the recent shift in Eric's vocation required more space. The shop, 5,000 square feet, with four bays and a pitched roof, stood beyond the swimming pool where the elegant landscaping gave way to the wild rear acres of the property, in a part of southwest Gainesville that developers hadn't yet managed to ruin. Without close neighbors, Eric could work as noisily and late as necessary, the night vibrating with the high whine of his air scribe. Well into the hours of ambient frog song, Amanda could see the lights burning, sparks shooting off the welder.

Excerpted from The Dinosaur Artist by Paige Williams. Copyright © 2018 by Paige Williams. Excerpted by permission of Hachette Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.