Clifford Stone - quixotic curator of arcane Americana at a Boston antiques foundation and cataloguer of our 'Vanished American Past' - forsakes Boston and his icy wife to return to his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas, and a life that is both instantly familiar and disturbingly strange. Cliff's journey home begins as a recovery mission, but it becomes a desperate search for, confrontation with, immersion in, and emergence from his lost past. In a series of libidinous, murderous, hilarious and anxious adventures, Cliff renews old friendships - including one with a girl he thought he'd forgotten - and makes some new enemies. The Cherry Pit is a flamboyant, lascivious, comic novel about restoration and renewal - and, like all proper comic novels, a serious book.