It's hard not to love human-interest columnist Cooper Barnet. Readers are drawn to his prize-winning prose, good looks, guileless charm, and compassion for those on the fringe. Barnet also has a seductive vulnerability that makes him irresistible. People have the sense that he needs protecting, and they instinctively try to take care of him. Like his girlfriend Percy Sims, an unflappable dancing teacher with enough "off" in her beat to cope with Cooper's peculiar superstitions and enigmatic ways. And his octogenarian sidekick Margaret Motte Burns, the wealthy Charleston aristocrat who invents creative games to school Cooper in the art of self-preservation. Duke Chang, a playfully irreverent restaurant owner, pulls his share of the load by lending a partially-willing ear while he keeps Cooper fed, and Sam Reaves, an investigative reporter as soft-hearted as he is hard-nosed, unsuccessfully attempts to keep his errant pal in check in the newsroom. But the friend Cooper most depends on is the only person familiar with his stolen childhood--Malachi Patterson, an unfulfilled alcoholic pianist also suffering from a troubled past. Yet not even Patterson can help on a hot spring day in 1988, when disgraceful evidence of Barnet's suffocating malaise is thrust into the public spotlight. The media exposure ignites a crisis, forcing the reeling columnist to search for one lost secret as he continues to run from another--the accident that began his hopeless private stuggle to fill The Tender Void. In this enchanting novel, Greta Medlin weaves a story of tragedy and serendipity, comedy and community, and a wounded man's fight to negotiate a life force advancing with the certainty of a Greyhound bus speeding to the South Carolina Midlands.