Any Place I Hang My Hat by Susan Isaacs (2004, Abridged, Compact Disc)

Anywhere I Hang my Hat by Susan Isaacs is a nice, rewarding read. Amy, her central character, is a thirtyish single New Yorker who works as a journalist for a ponderous news magazine. She has a checkered family situation with a mother who abandoned her as an infant, and a barely functioning mobster for a father who spent most of her childhood in stir. She was raised by her paternal grandmother, who supplemented her leg-waxing job by shoplifting. Amy has a good job, a degree from Harvard on a scholarship, has risen above her station in life by hard work and native smarts. She yearns to resolve her ongoing fear of abandonment, which is killing her relationship with her nice boyfriend, John, and threatening her career.

The story gets going when she is assigned to cover a Presidential candidate who turns out to have an illegitimate, son, now an adult, he never acknowledged. The revelation makes news and Amy follows up on the story, befriending the abandoned son. The situation stirs in her a desire to know about her own mother, and we're off on a quest to find Mom.

Amy's world is populated with great characters that are vividly drawn and well-used - a school chum from a super-rich family who bakes wedding cakes between husbands, lecherous New York guys, her clueless idiot boss at the magazine, her mobster father. Some of the minor characters are borderline cliche's, but not so much that it detracts from the story. We also learn some interesting things about journalism, research and cake decorating. No small thing.