Precocious nine-year-old Madeleine Altimari knows her calling in life is to emulate her late mother, a jazz singer "whose voice could redirect the mood of a room." Now that cancer has taken her mother and depression and addiction have hijacked her father, Madeleine can count on only herself to make her dreams come true. When she learns of the Cat's Pajamas, one of Philadelphia's remaining jazz clubs, Madeleine fills with purpose: to find the club, get herself on stage, and sing her lungs out to glory on Christmas Eve.
Sarina Greene, Madeleine's recently divorced art teacher, accepts an invitation to a holiday party at the club knowing her old high-school flame will also attend. Meanwhile, the club's broke owner, Jack Lorca, faces $30,000 in citations and will lose everything if he doesn't pay. Though they're unaware of it, these three outsiders are on a collision course with each other and with the miraculous.
Philadelphia native Marie-Helene Bertino's (Safe as Houses) novel has a verbal cadence that gives the city a thumping heartbeat, capturing the feel of the jazz medium perfectly. Her characters' lives combine, diverge and riff off of each other like solos traded between musicians in a well-oiled ensemble. Bertino's instinct for pushing the boundaries of probability into the realm of the small miracle gives readers the sense that if something unforeseen but truly good could happen at a run-down jazz club on Christmas Eve, then it could happen at any moment. --Jaclyn Fulwood