The Garden Of Lost And Found

The fourth volume of the Gospel Harmonies, " The Garden of Lost and Found" tells the story of James Ramsay, a 21-year-old man who discovers, upon the death of his estranged mother, that he's inherited a building in New York City. James takes up residence in No. 1 Dutch Street, a five-story brownstone, whose only other tenant is an elderly black woman named Nellydean. Because of its location a few blocks from the World Trade Center, the building's lot is worth millions, but the estate is cash poor. James is immediately faced with a choice: sell the building for a small fortune--and turn Nellydean out of the only home she's known for more than forty years--or attempt to stave off the mounting tide of taxes that will cause him to forfeit his only connection to a mother he never knew. Then Nellydean's niece shows up, looking for a home for herself and her unborn child, and an older man becomes smitten with James, even as James's health fails.
"The Garden of Lost and Found" maps a tangled network of sexual, familial, and financial complications, over which hangs the specter of 9/11. A hallucinatory, lyrical, and often darkly hilarious portrait of 21st-century America.