Publisher's Synopsis
"Max, a marginally successful painter in New York's SoHo in the late1970s is drawn into a quest to unravel the arson-murder of Shirley, a literary editor, in order to extricate one of his oldest friends, a novelist whose hysteria has made him a prime suspect. As Max finds himself entangled in the poignant fate of Shirley's orphaned mixed-race child and the deceits, manipulations, and misjudgments of characters ranging from old junkies to newly rich patrons, from lesbian mothers to psychotic con men, from displaced rural working people to the denizens of mainstream publishing. Readers get a vivid picture of the shifting environment of the late 1970s: the action moves among SoHo bars, lofts, and galleries, and the counties just north of New York's suburbia--impoverished small towns and abandoned farms--where ex-pat art types are beginning to settle, clashing with the rural poor, elite establishment landowners, and a shadow neo-Nazi subcul
