I'm often asked what novels by other authors I'm reading when I'm writing one of my own. The better question is: What and who am I listening to? I'm pleased to share many of the tunes, recognizable and obscure, that helped me write Part II, "Mantis," of my novel The Hour I First Believed. I hope you enjoy them.

Songs

1. "I Can't Tell You Why" — Vince Gill from Common Thread: The Songs of the Eagles (Schmit, Henley, Frey) In Gill's melancholy vocal, I hear Caelum's attempts to reach a wife who's slowly fading away.

2. "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)" — Fats Domino from The Fat Man: 25 Classic Performances (Williams) In 1957, my sister Vita bought and played, over and over on our turntable record player, Fats Domino's "(I Found My Thrill) on Blueberry Hill." In 2000, years before our sons moved to the Big Easy, Chris and I attended the New Orleans Jazz Fest and caught "the Fat Man's" lively performance. In Katrina's aftermath, Domino was presumed dead, having drowned in his Ninth Ward home. Happily, reports of his demise were premature.

3. "Louisiana 1927" — Randy Newman & the Louisiana and New York Philharmonic Orchestras from Our New Orleans 2005 (Newman) Fats Domino's fictional neighbors, Moses and Janis Mick, escape Katrina before their home is destroyed. This dirge by one of America's best contemporary songwriters evokes an earlier New Orleans flood that resonates with the tragedy of Katrina's aftermath and the deep-seated racism it exposed.

4. "She Loves the Jerk" — John Hiatt from Y'All Caught? (Hiatt) With his own wife inaccessible, Caelum longs for Moses's wife, Janet, his upstairs tenant.

5. "Hold On" — Tom Waits from Mule Variations (Waits/Brennan) Waits's best songs are both sharply observed and arrestingly askew and can break the listener's heart. The character of Ethel Dank, the doomed mother of Mary Agnes (aka "Jinx"), was imagined during repeated listenings of this song

6. "The Magdalene Laundries" — Emmylou Harris from A Tribute To Joni Mitchell (Mitchell) Interpreted here by the ever-reliable Emmylou, Mitchell's song about the infamous Irish prison laundry which housed girls of "ill repute" and was supervised by the Sisters of Charity, argues for the compassionate treatment of incarcerated women. Sounds like a good idea to me.

7. "My Beer Is Rheingold the Dry Beer" — from Tee Vee Toons: The Commercials The beer that made Miss Rheingold famous. Or was it the other way around? Caelum's beautiful but reckless mother won, then lost, the title Miss Rheingold 1950.

8-11. "Battle Cry of Freedom," "Dixie/Bonnie Blue Flag," "Battle Hymn of the Republic," "Weeping Sad and Lonely" — An instrumental medley fromThe Civil War: A Ken Burns Film After losing her soldier sons, Edmond and Levi, to a war she opposed, Lizzy Popper heads to Washington to nurse and comfort other mothers' sons.

12. "Déjà vu All Over Again" — John Fogerty from The Long Road Home (Fogerty) Wars are fought for different reasons, but mothers' sorrows are always the same. Once the driving force of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Fogerty reflects on Iraq, Vietnam, Korea . . .

13. "Peace Call" — Eliza Gilkyson, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Patty Griffin, and Iris DeMent from Land of Milk and Honey (W. Guthrie) At Kareem Kendricks's memorial service, Caelum hears a scruffy college student's performance of Woody Guthrie's plea for peace.

14. "A Change Is Gonna Come" — Ben Sollee from Learning To Bend (Cooke/Sollee) Sollee does a 21st century take on the Sam Cooke classic, sung by Wanda Fellows at the Quirk C.I. memorial service Caelum attends with Velvet. (Thanks, Justin)

15. "Without Her" — Harry Nilsson from Nilsson's Personal Best (Nilsson) Singer-songwriter Nilsson, a favorite of the Beatles, is most remembered for "Everybody's Talkin'," from the soundtrack of the Oscar-winning film Midnight Cowboy. In the aftermath of his friend John Lennon's death, he advocated for gun control until his own untimely death to heart disease. In this lushly orchestrated cut, Nilsson's articulates Caelum's loss of the love of his life.

16. "Not Alone" — Patty Griffin from Living with Ghosts (Griffin) Having become a fan of Griffin's, I bought her first cd years before I listened to this song, its final track. When I finally did, I was startled by its resonance to the novel I'd been writing for several years.

17. "We Gotta Get You a Woman" — Todd Rundgren from The Very Best of Todd Rundgren (Rundgren) Alphonse Buzzi searches for a vintage yellow Mustang and, in the process, finds love.18. "Buona Sera" — Louis Prima from Big Night Soundtrack (Prima) A saluta, Mrs. Buzzi! Far more brash than my own mother, Mrs. B is an amalgam of Anna, her sister Jennie, and our elderly next-door neighbor, a four-foot-eight force of nature named Lucy Levanto.

19. "Must Jesus Bear This Cross Alone?" — Sam Cooke from Sam Cooke with the Soul Stirrers (arr. Cooke) Cooke, whose life would end prematurely and tragically, recorded this gospel number in 1956 as lead singer with the Soul Stirrers, prior to his breakthrough as a chart-topping soul singer with hits like "Cupid" and "Wonderful World." My alternate title for The Hour I First Believed was Not Alone (see #15 above). This song, performed by Tabitha and Rosalind at the Quirk CI family mass, incorporates both titles.

20. "Graceland" — Willie Nelson from Across the Borderline (Simon) One iconic American troubador interprets another as he sings of traveling "through the cradle of the Civil War" toward Elvis's Graceland, and a state of grace. With Velvet in the passenger seat beside him, Caelum, too, travels toward grace as he heads north to Vermont's Hope Cemetery.

21. "Take My Hand" — Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama from There Will Be a Light (Harper) The ability-and inability-to take the hand of another is a motif that threads its way through The Hour I First Believed. Harper's plaintive vocal, backed by the startling urgency of the Blind Boys, helped me to better understand the story I was gestating.

22. "Amazing Grace/Nearer My God To Thee" — Emmylou Harris and Ladysmith Black Mambazo from Long Walk to Freedom (traditional) By a serendipitous accident (my writing often lurches forward via the power of these inexplicable "gifts"), I discovered this amazing version of the novel's title song late in the writing of the novel. When I listen to Harris in harmony with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, I hear the voices of Lydia Quirk and Mr. Mpipi and renew my hope for a world that practices humility and celebrates diversity.

23. "Hope's Aria (Il Giardino di Rose)" — Cecelia Bartoli from Opera Proibita (Scarlatti) — With a bow to hope and high culture, I include this aria, composed by Scarlatti and channeled through the wondrous voice of Bartoli. Now a "senior citizen," Caelum surrenders his farm to the Seaberrys and moves peacefully to a more modest home, beneath which flows two conjoined rivers. Bartoli's words reflect Caelum's fate by novel's end.

While I take delight in sweet oblivion
Let the playful breeze
Whisper more languidly around my heart.
Let the waves meander by,
Babbling against the riverbanks,
While I rest here among the flowers.
(Thanks, Steve)

24. "Come On Up to the House" — Tom Waits from Mule Variations (Waits/Brennan) Who better than Waits to close the show, with a lyric by which Caelum might survive and thrive? "Come down from your cross, we can use the wood": my fictional stand-in, Dr. Patel, couldn't have said it better herself.