In Bal­loon Dog, the wist­ful, imag­i­na­tive, dis­arm­ing­ly fun­ny new nov­el from vet­er­an ghost­writer Daniel Pais­ner. It’s a brazen art heist push­es our pro­tag­o­nists to reflect on the choic­es they’ve made in their lives… and, the ones that have been made for them. Set in the near-present, in the post-Trump/pre-COVID spring and fall of 2018, the sto­ry turns on the ill-con­ceived the of a high-end Jeff Koons sculp­ture, lied in plain site from its perch beside a lux­u­ri­ous moun­tain home in Park City, Utah, and fol­lows the mus­ings and mis­ad­ven­tures of a would-be writer in midlife crises and the would-be art thief behind the ill-con­cep­tion. A dark­ly com­ic tale of long­ing and lega­cy and let­ting go, the nov­el asks read­ers to con­sid­er what it means to leave a mark, and what it takes to be swept up in the same cur­rents that move almost every­one else-and, to reflect on the places we make in our lives for art and connection.