Ann Patchett's second novel to be published in the UK, following the Orange Prize-shortlisted 'The Magician's Assistant'.
John Nickel is a black ex-jazz musician who only wants to be a good father. When his son is taken away to Miami by his mother, Nickel is left with nothing but Muddy's, the Memphis blues bar that he manages. Then he hires Fay Taft, a young white waitress from east Tennessee who has a volatile brother, Carl, in tow. They spell nothing but trouble for Nickel. Fay stirs up both romantic and paternal impulses in him and Carl is clearly a no-good.
But 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 whose place he has taken.
- ISBN10 0395694612
- ISBN13 9780395694619
- Publish Date 12 April 1996 (first published 30 August 1995)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 21 June 2021
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Houghton Mifflin
- Imprint Houghton Mifflin (Trade)
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 305
- Language English