On this Sunday, after the NFL preseason game, we were sitting on the porch quiet as mice when Jewel held up the newspaper and said, "Raymond. Let's go here and do this," and "here" was the Paradise casino, a dozen blocks away on the beach in Biloxi, and "this" was gambling.

So begins this story in which Ray and Jewel Kaiser try out the Paradise. What curious things happen to them, what tricks of chance 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, 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.