Benjamin Haimowitz

Baby Steps, Giant Steps Benjamin Haimowitz

Baby Steps, Giant Steps is a novel that explores, over five decades, transformation in the role of women and changing relationships between the sexes. Three soldiers, including the narrator, serve in an Army reserve unit activated in a Cold War crisis. When the wife of one of them joins her husband at the remote outpost where the unit is stationed, the narrator finds himself drawn to her. He sees her as representing a new day for women, in contrast to the husband, a wild sort whose masculinity harks back to an earlier time. Tensions between the two men lead to violence shortly before the unit is deactivated and the soldiers dispersed. Decades pass, with the narrative culminating in 9/11 and its aftermath. Through chance. the narrator belatedly learns the fates of the couple in whose marriage he once intruded, knowledge that engenders guilt, awe, and tears..