Families are not simply made up of blood relations; this Ann Patchett understands better than most. John Nickel used to be a jazz drummer, but now runs a bar in Memphis, Tennessee; the mother of his son has taken the boy away, to unimaginable Florida; Nickel is left to find family where he can. What he finds are the Tafts: Fay and Carl, sister and brother, adrift in Memphis after the death of their father, the Taft of the title. Nickel gives Fay a job as a waitress; twice her age, black when she is white, he is torn by the nature of his feelings for her, drifting uneasily as they do between fatherly and sensual.
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