This is Terry's writing at his best. The book is gently written in it's styling. The characters are fully fleshed out, but the story is told softly, without hard edges and chaos. This tells the story of a band of homeless misfits who manage to share their lives with each other, care for one another and become their own special family.
When Arthur arrives on the scene, a man who seems incapable of seeing bad in anyone, they quickly enfold him into their group. What follows is a story of compassion, human strengths and growth.
This story leads you to feel that perhaps the next time you see some homeless/eccentric looking characters on the street, you should take a second or even a third look before you brush them off as vermin.
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April 2016
Mercer University Press
When Arthur Benjamin steps from a Greyhound bus in Savannah, Georgia, he is immediately robbed by an affable street magician named Hamby Cahill. It is Hamby's first act of thievery and the remorse of it so overwhelms him that he finds lodging for Arthur in The Castle, a warehouse supposedly owned by Melinda McFadden, an eccentric and fragile grande dame of imagined aristocracy who is known as Lady to the strange assembly of street people she has arbitrarily selected to be her Guests. There, Arthur finds his family-an ex-con shoplifter, a disgruntled seamstress, a young artist suspected of being a hooker, and a former boxer known as Lightning.
For Arthur, it is the company that will change his life, as he, in turn, will change the lives of everyone he encounters. Yet, he does not know he will become entangled with political arrogance over a minor traffic mishap, or be targeted for brutality. He does not know he will encounter Wally Whitmire, proponent of the Destiny of the Dominoes, or that he will become an unqualified mayoral candidate put forth to serve as an irritant to the incumbent Harry Geiger. And he does not know he will be looked upon by the people of Savannah-fortunate and unfortunate, alike-as an icon, a beloved figure who wears a cape of invented royalty and distributes paper flowers made of cocktail napkins as gifts of comfort. Arthur knows only that he has found his place and his purpose.