A Cajun fortuneteller. A sassy sex show performer. A pair of Voodoo Buddhists in the Bywater... What more does an aspiring street musician need to make his life complicated? When Myles rescues Kit, a mysterious woman wandering in the desert landscape of the Baja Peninsula, he has no idea how his good deed will irrevocably change the future. Already a fugitive from justice, he soon finds himself on the run with murder charges hanging over his head. Fleeing north with Kit, under an assumed identity, he leaves an idyllic beach existence on the Sea of Cortez for a new life as a musician in New Orleans. But even in a city that continually reels with celebration and colorful characters, the past catches up with Myles in a series of cataclysmic events from which there is no turning back. Meanwhile, in a Vermont village, Tyler Mackenzie's domain has been forever changed by the presence of Chloe, the whirlwind young mother of his twin granddaughters. In an effort to fill her own loneliness, Chloe has taken over his household and his job, leaving Tyler in a semi-permanent state of depression, a couch potato unable to locate his irresponsible son, Tucker, or his wayward best friend, Myles. But the winter doldrums end abruptly when Diva, Myles's cat, arrives inexplicably via air courier, and when Chloe befriends Angel, a charismatic tourist she meets at the local inn. Soon Chloe is derailed by dark desires for drugs and sex and is plunged into a hypnotic nightmare of deception, and, Tyler finds himself once again searching for the lost adult children of West Jordan, Vermont. With an improbable cast of spicy personalities, Catnip Jazz works its way from Mexico to New Orleans and to the seediest sections of Montreal, weaving compelling narratives together in a dark and twisty adventure that keeps the pages turning and burning.
