Robard Hughes has raced across the country in pursuit of a woman, and Sam Newel is hunting for the missing part of himself. On an uncharted island in the Mississippi, both these godless pilgrims find what they have been searching for in an explosion of shocking violence. The novel that launched the career of one of America's late -20th-century masters,

A Piece of My Heart is a tour-de-force that does justice to Ford's diverse literary gifts: his unerring eye for detail, his pitch-perfect ear for dialogue, and his sharp understanding of human nature.