Author(s): Andre Dubus

General Fiction

One early September night in Florida, a young woman brings her daughter to work. AprilâÂÂs usual babysitter is in the hospital, so she decides itâÂÂs best to have her 3 year-old daughter close by, watching childrenâÂÂs videos in the office, while she works. Except that April is a stripper at the Puma Club for Men. And tonight she has an unusual client, a foreigner both remote and too personal, and free with his money. Lots of it, all cash. His name is Bassam, and in a couple of days heâÂÂs bound for Boston from where heâÂÂll set off to take his part in an atrocity against America. Meanwhile, another man, AJ, has been thrown out of the club for holding hands with his favourite stripper. HeâÂÂs drunk, angry and lonely. When he comes across AprilâÂÂs daughter wandering in the car park, the action he takes and the web of deceit he spins have life-changing consequences. From these explosive elements comes a relentless, raw, searing, passionate page-turning narrative, a big-hearted and painful novel about sex in the seamy underside of American life at the moment before the world changed, it juxtaposes lust for domination with hunger for connection, sexual violence with family love. It seizes the reader by the throat with the same psychological tension, depth and realism that characterised Andre DubusâÂÂs bestseller, House of Sand and Fog â and an even greater sense of the dark and anguished places in the human heart.