Publisher's Synopsis
You're in a used bookstore when you find a filthy old notebook. You smell the mildew and feel the aged mushiness of the remaining pages, about to disintegrate in your fingertips, and stained with mud, coffee, tears, who knows what else. Further inspection reveals that it's a diary. Do you read it? Who wouldn't? Then you notice that it has passed through several hands since 1928 when a teenaged runaway named Clara started the whole thing. Now it's in your hands. Do you add your own story to this odd message-in-a-bottle collection? This is the question Kal Winters is avoiding. Seventy-six years after Clara dropped her diary on the steps of Union Station, Kal finds it in a used bookstore and sets out to trace its path, hoping to learn the secret of Clara's identity. During this surreal journey that draws from folklore, legend and tarot, Kal encounters a cast of weird and wonderful players in a story about alienation and the human need to connect.
