The Garden of Lost and Found — Dale Peck

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 at No. 1 Dutch Street, a five-story brownstone near the World Trade Center, whose only other tenant is an elderly black woman named Nellydean. 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.

This is the fourth volume of Gospel Harmonies, a series of seven stand-alone books (four have been written) that follow the character of John in various guises as he attempts to navigate the uneasy relationship between the self and the postmodern world.