A bright, timid boy explores a sheltered childhood in rural Indiana. Post-World War II America is undergoing profound change while stasis seems to rule his isolated world. He finds contentment musing on his church, his town library, and the beloved native woodlands that surround him.

When change finally comes, as part of a rising middle-class life and with the turmoil over his developing self, he records his surroundings with an observant eye, finding both the humor and the heartbreak, but with the growing awareness that he doesn’t fit in. As his generation defines itself, he recognizes he is an outsider: at school, at work, and ultimately, among those with whom he is growing up. Silence becomes his defense. Silence about the anxiety of who he might actually be.

Studying abroad offers a chance to follow a girlfriend to Europe, then triggers unforeseen crisis when he falls in love with a young man. He steels himself for an imagined life of tragedy and alienation, which he nonetheless insistently pursues. His quest leads him to dead ends, more journeys, and further struggle. In an overcrowded classroom in the basement of a primary school in Newark, New Jersey, he finds the inner child he had lost along the way. It is his crucial education.

His story unfolds during the tumultuous years of the 1960s and ‘70s with their heady rush of the Kennedy era, roiling disruptions and social unrest that follow assassinations and an escalating war in Vietnam. These are chronicled through the popular culture and music of the times.

This is a cautionary tale, told late in life, bittersweet over things that should have been said earlier. It is a story that resonates today – in an equally unsettled time of social upheaval. It will resonate with anyone who struggles to be who he or she truly is.

Review of Waltzing A Two-Step from
FR. JAMES GARDINER

SA, Director of Special Projects

“Most coming-of-age books are so self-referential that, halfway through, the reader is trapped in an unwelcome hagiography. “Waltzing A Two-Step” is different: it’s at times poignant, at other times funny but always engrossing and never, it seems to me, in need of a reality check. I hope that Dan Juday is busy writing a helpful sequel.”

Review of Waltzing A Two-Step from Chanticleer Book Reviews.

“Born a few years after the second world war, Dan experiences a peaceful and happy childhood in rural Indiana, moving frequently before the family settles on a rural area of land named Springwood in Clinton County, Indiana. The Juday family were devout Catholics and enrolled Dan and his siblings in Catholic schools until the family moved to Springwood. Public school became the only option for the siblings. There Dan does his best to fit in but his status as a minority Catholic in a mostly protestant community in the 1950s brings its own challenges.

For Dan, his struggles don’t stop there.”

Dan’s Reckons with Sin