Lost in the City

The nation's capital that serves as the setting for the stories in Edward P. Jones's collection, Lost in the City, lies far from the city of historic Monuments and national politicians. Jones takes the reader beyond that narrow world into the lives of African-American men and women who work against the constant threat of loss to maintain a sense of continuity in their lives and connection to their community. From "The Girl Who Raised Pigeons" to the well-to-do career woman awakened in the night by a phone call that will take her on a journey back to the past, Jones paints portraits of people who are only briefly sketched in daily newspaper articles. Written with a generosity of detail, each story seems in itself to be a short novel in which the characters struggle against the limits of their city to put off the loss of family, friends, memories, and, ultimately, themselves.