In The First Bad Man, Miranda July tells the story of Cheryl, a vulnerable, uptight woman in her early forties who lives alone, with a perpetual lump in her throat, unable to cry. Cheryl is haunted by a baby boy she met when she was six; she also believes she has a profound connection with Phillip, a philandering board member at Open Palm, the women's self-defense studio where she has worked for twenty years. When Cheryl's bosses ask if their twenty-one-year-old daughter Clee can move into her house for a little while, Cheryl's eccentrically ordered world explodes. And yet it is Clee-the selfish, cruel blond bombshell-who teaches Cheryl what it means to love and be loved and, inadvertently, provides the solace of a lifetime. This is a spectacularly original, unsettling, accomplished, and moving first novel with a tender and beguiling happy ending.