THE PROBLEM WITH MURMUR LEE

This elegiac novel, chronicling the life and death of idiosyncratic Murmur Lee Harp, showcases Fowler's easy, loose-limbed prose and sympathetic eye for human fallibility. Murmur Lee, 35, owns a popular local rundown bar in a North Florida backwater called Iris Haven and is skilled in the use of potions and spells. After her only child dies and her husband runs away, she finally finds the man she thinks may be the love of her life, then mysteriously drowns in a local river. Fowler (Before Women Had Wings ) beautifully crafts the story of this woman's life through the eyes of her motley bunch of friends and through the spirit of Murmur Lee as she looks back at her past life. After Murmur Lee's death, Charleston Rowena Mudd, Murmur's childhood friend and a "Self Loathing Southerner," finds herself back home in Iris Haven, having dropped out of Harvard Divinity School. Also in town is Billy Speare, Murmur's last love, a writer who believes he's on the verge of bestsellerdom; Lucinda Smith, an angry, chain-smoking yoga teacher; Dr. Zachary Klein, who's mourning his wife, dead of breast cancer; and former marine turned transsexual Edith Piaf, mesmerized by the singer of the same name. Somehow, Fowler makes the disparate viewpoints and characters work, and the singular life of Murmur Lee Harp engagingly unfolds, as does the mystery behind her early death. Agent, Joy Harris. (Jan. 11)