taken him to Florida, they and Marion’s family (the Woodmores) constitute Nickel’s entire biological family. With the regular bar employees (especially Wallace the bouncer), however, this African American bar manager has developed another kind of family. In contrast, although the Tafts have maintained geographic proximity, the death of Levon (the father) has destroyed their emotional closeness. Through flashbacks, Patchett reveals their dramatic personality changes after Levon’s death forced them to move to Memphis and live with wealthy relatives.

The theme of loss is significant in Taft. In different ways, all the major characters have experienced loss. The Tafts are grieving for their father. Vulnerable because he misses his son, Nickel understands the Tafts’ grief; thus he pities the waiflike Fay, hires her (though he suspects her of lying about her age), and allows her brother Carl to hang out in the bar. In a confused mix of pity, friendship, and physical attraction, Nickel attempts to become a surrogate father to Fay and later to Carl; the result is nearly disastrous for everyone.

The dominant theme in Taft is responsible love. Until Franklin’s birth, Nickel had never loved anyone but himself; he adores his son at first sight, however, and soon learns that with such love comes responsibility. To earn Marion’s favor, he does whatever she asks, actually preparing her to save his life. Likewise, because he admires Fay’s sense of responsibility toward Carl, Nickel not only refuses to take advantage of her sexually but also tries to help rescue Carl.

The Magician’s Assistant

Deception is a central theme in The Magician’s Assistant. Sabine must deal with the death of her husband, Parsifal, and the end of her role as assistant in his magic act. She readily acknowledges that Parsifal’s magic was primarily deception of the audience, but she thinks she knows his secrets, including his homosexual relationship with Phan. The reading of his will shows her, however, that he deceived her too: This supposed orphan from Connecticut actually has an entire family in Nebraska. Becoming acquainted with the members of that family, the Fetters (possibly another of Patchett’s puns), especially Parsifal’s sister Kitty, helps Sabine deal with her grief over the loss of Parsifal. In turn, Sabine’s magic defuses tensions in Kitty’s family.

Another significant theme of The Magician’s Assistant is the importance of family or community. Sabine is devastated by the loss of Parsifal. For twenty years, even before their marriage, Sabine considered him her family, though her parents live nearby and she phones them daily. Especially after Parsifal’s death, the house she shared with him, Phan, and a succession of “Rabbits” seems one of Patchett’s typical confined spaces—until the arrival of Parsifal’s family forces Sabine to return to the larger world of Los Angeles. When she visits them in Nebraska, she enters another isolated locale, as the snow cuts her off from everyone outside the immediate family. Learning to think of Parsifal as Guy—his real name—changes her attitude toward his deception, makes her a genuine part of the Fetters family, and consoles her as she realizes that they lost Guy before she did. Ultimately, Sabine and Kitty form another of Patchett’s recurring sisterly bonds.

All the characters of this novel experience grief. Dot blames herself for Guy’s leaving; she views her son’s criminal record as being her fault. Kitty believes she should have intervened to help Guy, and in her marriage she has repeated their mother’s mistakes. Sabine does not share their guilt, but as she becomes acquainted with their lost Guy, she achieves peace.

Patchett adds an element of the supernatural in this novel as well: Sabine’s dreams reunite her with Phan, who explains the afterlife and answers her questions about eventual reunion with Parsifal. Sabine finally realizes that reunion will be her acceptance of his family.

Bel Canto

The dominant theme in Bel Canto is that of the importance of community, seen in the harmony that eventually develops among a group of rebels and hostages as they achieve a sense of community within the isolated confines of the vice presidential mansion of an unnamed South American country. Based on an actual four-month hostage crisis that took place at the Japanese embassy in Lima, Peru, in the late 1990’s, Bel Canto explores the hostages’ increasing awareness of their captors’ individuality and their growing regard for those individuals. Like the operatic genre, the novel emphasizes harmony among the separate parts as the rebels help the hostages with gardening, the hostages play chess with the rebel leader, an opera-star hostage gives voice lessons to a rebel, and Gen the translator not only teaches the rebel Carmen to read but also falls in love with her.

Patchett’s recurring theme of responsible love is present in Bel Canto too. Roxane, the opera singer, unifies the community of hostages and rebels. Most of the hostages worship her from afar, and her daily singing calms both groups as everyone works together to provide the musical scores she needs. Katsumi Hosokawa, whose birthday party was the occasion that the rebels used to take the hostages, falls in love with Roxane; Carmen guards Roxane’s room each night, and she eventually helps Hosokawa to enter Roxane’s room so the two can make love. Separated from the real world, only the characters Thibault and Father Arguedas maintain responsibility to their commitments.

Loss is also present in this novel, as at its conclusion soldiers storm the walled mansion, killing all the rebels as well as Hosokawa, who dies trying to protect Carmen. In the epilogue, Gen and Roxane find consolation, marrying each other with the Thibaults in attendance. Gen says that hearing Roxane sing enables him to think well of the world.

Run

As Run opens, the Doyle family consists of a father, Bernard Doyle; Bernard’s biological son, Sullivan; and Bernard’s two adopted African American sons, Tip and Teddy. Although the four officially share a residence, they are emotionally separate, each son thinking he has disappointed his father. In a possible bow to the classical unities of time and place, Patchett sets most of the novel in the family mansion and in a hospital during a twenty-four-hour period. Confined by a blinding snowstorm and Tip’s broken ankle, his father and brothers confront family and personal issues, becoming a family again—for the first time since Mrs. Doyle died.

This attitudinal change results from the sacrifice of Tennessee Alice Moser, who is seriously injured saving Tip from possible death. When the Doyles take her daughter Kenya home with them, Kenya’s questions show them they know almost nothing about the nearby poor. Eventually Kenya reveals the identity of Tip and Teddy’s birth mother, and all the Doyles come to understand the true meaning of responsible love, although none of them fully understands its depth in Tennessee’s case.

The recurring Patchett theme of deception appears in this novel as well. Specifically, stealing is part of the Doyle family heritage. Their prized statue of the Madonna was actually stolen by Mrs. Doyle’s great-grandfather because he believed it resembled his wife. For years he lied about how he got the statue, but finally he confessed that he had stolen it from a church. In each generation following, the statue had been inherited by the daughter who most resembled it.

All three sons deceive their father about their careers, but Sullivan has continued the family tradition of lying and stealing. Visiting Tennessee’s hospital room, he confesses to her what he has never told anyone: that he was driving when the car accident occurred in which his girlfriend was killed. His father has never allowed him to discuss that accident, and his life ever since has been a downward spiral of drugs and theft. He attempts to atone by taking care of Tennessee and Kenya.

Supernatural events occur also in Run. Father John Sullivan, the Doyle sons’ uncle, is believed to be a miraculous healer, though the cures do not continue. The dream or vision motif recurs in this novel too, as Tennessee and her best friend, Beverly, are reunited briefly to discuss the life of one and death of the other.

In an epilogue, with the family reconciled through Tennessee’s sacrifice and Kenya’s presence, Bernard Doyle symbolically presents the Madonna statue to Kenya, telling her that it always goes to the daughter in the family. Each of the Doyle children is pursuing a personal goal, and Kenya’s is to run in the Olympics.