First published 2014
Nine-year-old Madeleine Altimari has a sharp tongue and bigger dreams than her small frame suggests. She wants to be a jazz singer, but first she has to survive another brutal day at school where classmates mock her relentlessly. Her mother died recently, leaving Madeleine to care for her devastated father while nursing her own grief. On the night before Christmas Eve, she sets out across Philadelphia to find The Cat's Pajamas, a legendary jazz club where she plans to perform for the first time. Meanwhile, her fifth-grade teacher Sarina Greene prepares for a dinner party where she'll see her high school crush again after returning to the city following her divorce. Across town, Lorca faces losing The Cat's Pajamas forever unless he can raise thirty thousand dollars immediately. Three lives converge as the clock ticks toward Christmas, each person searching for something they've lost or never had.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, coming-of-age, contemporary, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking, whimsical
Tropes: found-family, grief, loss
Setting: Philadelphia
Period: Christmas Eve, Christmas
303 pages · Library Binding · Center Point Pub