The story of a Latin American science fiction writer and the lives her lost manuscript unites decades later in post-Katrina New Orleans. In 1929 in New Orleans, a Dominican immigrant named Adana Moreau writes a science fiction novel. The novel earns rave reviews, and Adana begins a sequel. Then she falls gravely ill. Just before she dies, she destroys the only copy of the manuscript. Decades later in Chicago, Saul Drower is cleaning out his dead grandfather's...

"The review in the Paris Times in November 1928 is rapturous in its praise of Lucia Joyce's skill and artistry as a dancer. The family has made their home in Paris--where the latest ideas in art, music, and literature converge. Acolytes regularly visit the Joyce apartment to pay homage to Ireland's exiled literary genius. Among them is a tall, thin young man named Samuel Beckett--a fellow Irish expat who idolizes Joyce and with whom Lucia becomes...