Side-Stepping with Shorty

Shorty McCabe has built a reputation in early 1900s New York as the man who can transform sluggish aristocrats into specimens of vigor. A former boxer turned physical culture trainer, Shorty moves through the city's gilded parlors and gymnasiums with sharp wit and sharper elbows. When wealthy financier Fletcher Dawes hires Shorty to whip him into shape, the trainer assumes it's a straightforward job. But high society proves trickier than any sparring partner, full of vain socialites, absurd pretensions, and women who complicate everything. Shorty must navigate dinner parties, damaged egos, and the occasional kidnapping attempt while maintaining his working-class principles in a world built on illusion. Ford delivers a fizzy comedy of manners, skewering the absurd lengths the wealthy will go to appear healthy while chronicling a New York that was already vanishing: the brownstone neighborhoods, the old-money families, and the bruisers who kept them in line.