A short story writer of exhilarating wit and empathy, Nelson returns to the novel after a decade with heightened authority.Tightly coiled, edgy, and funny, this complex tale of transcendent friendship begins with a spectacular death: Misty, a single mother, drives off a cliff.

Her surviving daughter, Cattie, is named after Catherine, Mistys best friend way back when they were young and wild in Wichita.Misty was poor and scrappy; pretty Catherine was the daughter of professors.Wealthy, childless, and married to her much older third husband, philandering Oliver, Catherine is still contending with her rigorous mothers piercing disapproval even though a stroke has stolen Graces ability to speak.

Its a shock to learn that Misty is dead, that she had a daughter, and that Catherine is her namesakes guardian.Cattie runs away from her Vermont boarding school, embarking on a cross-country odyssey as risky, if not as much fun, as the mad adventures her mother and Catherine miraculously survived.With the supreme recklessness of teen girls, Olivers farcical yet poignant dilemmas, Graces toughness, a resurgent serial killer, an AWOL soldier, and compelling canine characters, Nelsons sleekly powerful turbine of a novel riffs cannily on the many meanings of bound.