No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again; A Symphonic Novel

This sweeping drama of intimately connected families--black, white, and Latino--boldly conjures up the ever-shifting cultural mosaic that is America. At its heart is Vidam?a Farrell, half Puerto Rican, half Irish, who sets out in search of the father she has never known. Her journey takes her from her affluent suburban home to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where her father Billy Farrell now lives with his second family. Once a gifted jazz pianist, Billy lost two fingers in the Vietnam War and has since shut himself off from jazz. As Billy's colorful new family draws her into their fold, so Vidamia determines to draw her father back into the world he left behind. In the not so merry month of May 1988, when her studies had evolved into a drag, Vidamia Farrell, finishing her sophomore year of high school, again became as restless as she had the previous four years.