New Orleans in the early 1990's, the country in a low grade recession, of a hot summer night, with a few dollars in his duffel and a second hand violin latched up in a blistered case, an "unlikely" James Buck steps off the bus from the sad farmlands of nowhere. An autodidact, he busks the streets of this ancient town with Bartok and Tchaikovsky, while Nine Inches Nails hammers a lustful angst into the floor boards of every drinking hole from Rampart to the West Bank, and clear up to Claiborne, just as the era of Grunge blows in from the North West, ravaging the youth with a gorgeous industry of apathetic noise, an alienating and infectious roar, calling out the depravity below the thin skin of mainstream America. Opportunities scarce, income feast or famine, racism seething on every stoop, a disenchanted and impoverished Buck tries to make some sense of himself in this choleric world, in this lyric novel about love, trust, youth, morality and a search for something meaningful. Here is a story sad, yet so beautiful it breaks the heart, and then mends it, stronger for the repair.