It is 7:00 a.m. in Philadelphia and two days before Christmas. Madeleine Altimari, who will be ten in two days, wants to be a jazz singer. Her mother has recently died and her father, immobilized with grief, is barely able to function. Her classmates make fun of her and her principal has expelled her for reasons Madeleine isn't sure of.Sarina Greene, Madeleine's art teacher, has recently returned to her hometown following her divorce. She is nervously looking forward to a reunion that evening with former classmates. One of the guests will be Ben, her high school crush who took her on a disastrous date to their prom.
Across town, Jack Lorca wakes up in a drunken haze. Owner of The Cat's Pajamas, a renowned jazz club, he is faced with multiple violations of the city code for underage drinking, pyrotechnics and other indiscretions. He must come up with $30,000...and seriously change his ways.
Over the course of the next 24 hours these three people (and a variety of others) make their way to The Cat's Pajamas where, improbable as it may seem, Madeleine's dream comes true. Lives are changed, people reconcile, and new directions are taken. Not all ends happily for everyone but as 7:00 a.m. on Christmas Eve dawns there is hope.
It's hard to resist a story about a motherless child struggling to find her way. Similar in some ways to The Secret Life of Bees, this story tugged at my heart and had me racing through the pages so that I could find out what happened. Madeleine is not a model child but she is still sympathetic. The book is relatively short with short chapters but even so the author managed to make all of the characters (even the unlikable Principal Randles) seem real. Not all the ends are tied up neatly but there is hope for all of the characters.
You won't be sorry if you invest your time reading this book - you might even want to visit Philadelphia and its jazz clubs.
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