by Edward Hardy.

Thomas Dunne. 294 pages. $24.95

By KRISTIN LATINA
Special to the Journal

Taking care of a 3-year-old is a challenge for even the most prepared and experienced caregivers. In Edward Hardy’s new novel, Keeper and Kid, James Keeper is neither prepared nor experienced. In fact, he doesn’t even know he has a son until he is named guardian practically overnight.

Keeper, as he’s called by his friends, has built a new life for himself after a messy divorce from Cynthia. He and his best friend run an antiques outfit in Providence, and he has recently bought a house in Edgewood with his girlfriend, Leah. But when he must take charge of Leo, his precocious 3-year-old son from a post-divorce tryst with Cynthia, everything spins out of control.

Rhode Islanders will love the fact that Hardy — a native Rhode Islander now teaching in Brown’s nonfiction writing program — backs his story with a strong sense of place. Keeper’s antiques store is on Wickenden Street; he and Leo go shopping at Lindsey’s Market in Pawtuxet Village; and he and Leah frequent the Coffee Exchange on Wickenden and the Wild Colonial, a bar on South Water Street in Providence.

The story itself is bittersweet, as Keeper and Leo strive to understand one another and Keeper fights to keep Leah in the picture — two competing concerns that lead to a host of unusual thoughts and actions. He wonders what woman would date him with Leo in tow. He watches the Travel Channel and gets depressed about all the places he thinks he won’t ever see because he has a child.

“It feels like I’m under house arrest,” he tells his friends, “Like if my life got any smaller the whole thing would simply fold down into a black hole.”

But Keeper also tells Leo how brave he is and searches desperately for ways to make him feel more comfortable with the situation they’ve both been thrown into. This is how Hardy keeps the balance between some of Keeper’s selfish actions and his endearing efforts to be a good dad. Keeper and Leo have both been ambushed in a way, and the only thing they can do is muddle through together.

Hardy’s tone stays on the light side most of the time, making it seem as if Keeper is a friend confiding in the reader over a pint at a bar. But he’s also tackling some tough realities here — realities of parenthood that few explore out loud for fear of what others will think. The trick is that he looks at the situation from each party’s perspective, thereby ensuring the reader’s understanding and sympathy for all involved.

Keeper and Kid is an unconventional but skillful and ultimately satisfying novel. It leaves the reader with a true, but too rarely expressed, picture of how complicated life can become and how we all have the capacity to handle more than we think. KEEPER AND KID,