William Kennedy

In 1849, a boy saves a girl from the Hudson River in this story "of wonders and sweetness, magic and horrors {that} immerses itself in the marvelous" (The Boston Sunday Globe). A penniless Irish orphan, Daniel Quinn is among the crowds gathered at the Hudson River in Albany to watch a legendary dancer aboard the ferry. But when the boat strikes the ice that chokes the water on this wintry day, awe turns to terror. Though the dancer's life is lost,...

Quinn's epic journey carries him through the nightclubs and jungles of Cuba and into the newsrooms and racially charged streets of Albany on the day Robert F. Kennedy is fatally shot in 1968. The odyssey brings Quinn and his exotic but unpredictable Cuban wife, Renata, a debutante revolutionary, face-to-face with the darkest facets of human nature, and illuminates the power of love in the presence of death.

Albany, New York, Halloween, 1938. Francis Phelan and Helen Archer are bums. She used to be a singer on the radio, he used to be a major league pitcher. Death surrounds them. Helen is sick, one of their pals has cancer, he digs graves at the cemetery and visits the grave of his infant son whom he dropped. Visions of his past haunt him, including ghosts of two men he killed. One night, while drinking, Helen tries to sing at a bar. Next day, Fran visits...