John Dupre, a junior at West Virginia University, is an English major on the Dean's List dressed up as a Beatnik cowboy, the folk-singing resident outsider before nonconformity became a youth uniform.

Morgantown is a masterful ensemble piece centering around John and peopled by his unforgettable friends in the out crowd: Bill Cohen, the sharpshooting, knife-throwing Zen Buddhist Harvard scholar; Marge Levine, the political radical with the Nefertiti eyes; and William Revington, the scion of old money who has the world on a platter and can't think of a single thing to do with it. And then theres his girl-friends and sexual obsessions: Carol Rabinowitz, the Wyatt scholar and Jewish American Princess; Natalie, the folk-singing boy-girl with the mind of a scientist; Cassandra Markapolous, whom John loves but is not allowed to be in love with.

And, there's the Alice in the photograph, the boy dressed up as a girl dressed up as another girl, on and on endlessly reflecting: a hall of mirrors that threatens to draw John into its vortex.

Keith Maillard is the author of fourteen novels, including Two Strand River, Gloria, The Clarinet Polka, Difficulty at the Beginning, and most recently Twin Studies. He has won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Literary Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Awards. Keith was born and raised in West Virginia, and now lives in Vancouver. He has been a musician, a contributor for CBC Radio, a freelance photographer, and a journalist. He teaches at the University of British Columbia.

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"One of the greatest strengths of 'Difficulty at the Beginning' is the wide variety of feisty, clever women in John's life and his complicated respect for them."

"The nightmare of American manhood, being acted out in the public sphere by warmakers and politicians, is clearly and persuasively traced back to its lethal, chthonic sources in the solitary heart. This is brave, eloquent writing."