Saint Hiroshima

This story traces the lives of Phil Benson and Katie Doheney. As a boy, Phil tried to summon up an enthusiasm for baseball but his real passion lay in classical music which was considered somehow subversive – not really American, so he used his piano teacher's home as a sanctuary where his musical conspiracy with the universe could flourish. Katie is seen as a victim of another sort of conspiracy – convinced from the first brush of her childhood logic with the real life spectacle of death in a road accident and the image of the Hiroshima mushroom on television. The threat of nuclear holocaust stalked Katie's every moment. Meanwhile Katie stalked Phil Benson and they grew to understand each other's obsessions – Phil's keyboard was Katie's bomb shelter. The novel follows Katie into unlikely matrimony and Phil into the arms of a gun-toting St Louis actress.