Bridge of Sand — Janet Burroway

In this beautifully written novel, Burroway uses a woman's personal loss, coincident with 9/11, to explore race, territory, and renewal.

Dana, the widow of a Pennsylvania senator, buries her husband the morning of 9/11, only miles from the United 93 crash. After months of paralysis, she sells her house and heads south in an effort to pick up the lost strands of her youth.

Finding that her grandmother's house is now gone, replaced by a strip mall, she phones an old acquaintance. Cassius Huston is black, separated from a harridan of a wife, and devoted to his three-year-old daughter.Much to their surprise, Cassius and Dana fall in love. But when Dana is threatened by Cassius's family, she flees to the Gulf Coast, where she finally finds herself, and her life, in a place and culture she never could have anticipated.

Set amid the blur of 9/11, this wise, beautifully written novel of love, race, territory, and renewal explores the issues that challenge us all.