In 1968, English folk-singer Adam Earnshaw vanishes during a tour of the U.S. In The Pieces, a dazzling array of voices - university friends, lovers, fellow-musicians, a pirate radio DJ, an expatriate American record producer, an obsessive, self-destructive teenage girl - contribute their own fragments to the puzzle of his life. All, in their very different ways, have been indelibly touched by their encounter, more than fifty years ago, with the brilliant but elusive Earnshaw. But none, ultimately, can explain the riddle of what happened to him. In the end, there is an answer. But when it finally comes, it forces us to rethink everything we have just read.
