An ensemble-cast novel about the perennial temptations of dangerous love, following a jazz musician and the multiple women-some charmed by him, others scorned-who find the power of their own voices in this thrilling debut
It's 2013, and Circus Palmer, a forty-year-old Boston-based trumpet player and old-school ladies man, lives for his music, and refuses to be tied down. Before a gig in Miami, he learns that the woman who is secretly closest to his heart, the free-spirited drummer Maggie, is pregnant by him. He flees instead of facing the necessary conversation, setting off a chain of interlocking revelations from the various women in his life. Most notable among them is his teenage daughter Koko, who idolizes him, she's awakening to her own sexuality even as her mentally fragile mother struggles to overcome her long failed marriage and rejection by Circus.
Delivering a lush orchestration of diverse female voices, Warrell spins a provocative, soulful and gripping story of passion and risk, fathers and daughters, wives and single women, and finally hope and reconciliation, in answer to the age-old question: how do we find belonging when love is unrequited? LAURA WARRELL is a contributor to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and Tin House Writer's Workshop, and a graduate of the creative writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in the HuffPost, The Rumpus, Salon, Los Angeles Review of Books, and other publications. She has taught creative writing and literature at the Berkeley College of Music in Boston and through the Emerging Voices program at PEN America in Los Angeles, where she now lives.
