Washoe County Library System

"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...

Binky Braverman's stay with his aunt and uncle in Memphis unexpectedly proves to be full of adventure when characters on the boxes and jars in their kitchen come to life and become his friends.