246 pages. Donated 2010 May.

John Nickel is a black ex-jazz musician who only wants to be a good father. But when his son is taken away from him, he's left with nothing but the Memphis bar he manages. Then he hires Fay, a young white waitress, who has a volatile brother named Carl in tow. Nickel finds himself consumed with the idea of Taft—Fay and Carl's dead father—and begins to reconstruct the life of a man he never met. But his sympathies for these lost souls soon take him down a twisting path into the lives of strangers.

One of my favorite authors, Ann Patchet's prose sucks you in and doesn't let go. Her attention to detail is amazing. Gripping stories with characters so real you can't imagine you don't really know them.