At fifty-something, Rob has reached a twilit crossroads. A recent divorcee, he’s fled Houston to settle in St. Petersburg, Florida. Now, peering up at the mockingbird singing in a banyan tree, he wonders whether he could have done things differently.
Across the road, The Moon looms. Week after week, as autumn fades into winter into spring, Rob finds himself sat at the cosy bar, watching locals and out-of-towners drift in and out, their spectral lives affording brief glimpses into other worlds.
Rob talks and listens—he meets UFO conspiracists, South African ship-builders, aging artists, college students, the ill, the mourning—while, out in the world, Houston is swallowed by floods, the #MeToo movement shakes America, and, beyond the Florida coast, Hurricane Irma grows ever closer. Savoring each fleeting encounter, Rob ponders the changing world and his own place within it. By the time Irma hits, plunging Florida into chaos, he barely recognizes himself—and when the mockingbirds gather once more in the banyan tree, he realizes an even greater change is yet to come.
