The subject of veteran journalist-sports essayist Roger Kahn's first novel ["But Not to Keep"] is the interrelationship between two evolving institutions, one threatened, the other on the advance. The institution seemingly on the verge of collapse—or at least somewhat battered—is marriage. The one that appears to be holding its own is fatherhood, especially the single-parent variety.

Writing from an autobiographical perspective—if one takes as fact the personal details in the author's last book, "A Season in the Sun"—Kahn has fashioned a sober glimpse of contemporary society that is at once an indictment and a benediction. It sharply criticizes those forces—primarily the legal community and the courts—that compound the anguish inherent in a divorce and resultant custody proceedings. And yet, it blesses the supposed victims, the survivors—the sundered couple and the offspring—without casting stones at one parent or the other….

Kahn...