The Fleetwood Half-Orphan Asylum

The novel explores the relationship of two brothers, Amos and Horace, in the late 1920s, who find themselves living in an orphanage in a fictional town, Middleton, somewhere in the American Midwest. Their mother has died - or disappeared. Their father, Aloysius, won't talk about it. He can't cope, has lost his steady work and can't pay the mortgage. Their house is repossessed. He seeks the charity of the German-Lutheran Fleetwood Foundation, which runs the orphanage. Its director reluctantly accepts these children of a non-conformist, non-German, non-entity. In the orphanage, the two boys barely speak to each other. The younger, Horace, aged 10, strikes up a friendship with another boy, the lone Negro living at the half-orphan asylum, a bright kid of 11, and another outcast. Amos, 12, also a loner, is fiercely intelligent and with a chip on his shoulder that other boys want to knock off. Their planned six-month stay turns into years. The Wall Street Crash sets off the Great Depression. Then one day, Amos, now 15, disappears. He will not see his father or brother again for more than 30 years.

The book starts in 1996, in Charleston, South Carolina, where Christine, a woman of 80+ years, has just received a diagnosis of a terminal disease. She lives in an elegant house overlooking the harbor. Amos bought that house in 1951 but has never lived in it. Amos was a merchant seaman, based nowhere in particular, who has saved his pay by always staying on board ships, until he died, some 30 years ago. Christine is the keeper of Amos's secrets. She has also kept both the house and Amos's car, a 1941 Buick Roadmaster convertible, in tip-top condition from the money she has earned teaching school. Now, facing her own death, she sends a letter, a photograph, and a notebook to Amos's only surviving family member, a nephew, Nate. Christine suggests he comes to visit her, where she plans to reveal Amos's secrets.