Synopsis

Annie Ajami, a woman trying to forget her past, stands shivering in the Irish Channel of New Orleans on the freezing morning of her bookstore’s grand opening.  An old woman and two boys stumble into the store.  A man wanders in.  It does not take Annie long to discover that the old woman is homeless and the man, shabbily-dressed but cerebral looking, is an acclaimed author who disappeared from public sight years earlier after his novel became a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

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Excerpt

Nehemiah stood before the display window watching the flames shoot into the indigo sky, the orange-red streaks surrounded by billowing smoke that rose from the upper levels of the block-long stretch of buildings across the street from where he stood.  He heard animal cries coming from the veterinary clinic and kennel across the street and a human shriek from an upstairs apartment.  In the dark, he saw a figure run out of a stairwell followed by a white pit bull.  The figure, quick and secretive, ran down the sidewalk heading toward a triangular patch of greenery that divided Magazine Street from Sophie Wright Place.  It ran into the park and toward the statue of Sophie Bell Wright, before disappearing into the darkness.  Nehemiah recognized the figure.  He’d never seen Feayo run this quick before, the white pit bull escaping behind him and taking off in the opposite direction, looking like a ghost in the middle of the empty street.

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