num_pages: 228
description: Sam McWilliams is the only member of the comedy troupe Plum &amp; Jaggers who remembers the afternoon of June 11, when the first two cars of the Espresso from Milan to Rome exploded, killing everyone on board except a four-year-old French boy and a conductor.Haunted by the terrorist explosion that killed his parents and obsessively driven to protect his orphaned younger siblings—even if it means breaking the law—precocious, fiercely independent Sam discovers during a stint in a Washington, D.C., juvenile home that he has a gift as a writer of family comedy. So begins the dark, quirky Plum &amp; Jaggers series of sketches about a family of children whose parents are never at home. The McWilliams family troupe rises from open-mike venues to small comedy clubs to a late-night television slot, creating a stir—and unwittingly exposing the family to new dangers that cost Sam his resilient wit and threaten his sanity.Plum &amp; Jaggers is the story of a family blown apart by tragedy and one person’s powerful refusal to accept fate.
language: English
title: Plum & Jaggers
titlecomplete: Plum & Jaggers
characters: Julia McWilliams, Charlotte McWilliams, Oliver McWilliams, Sam McWilliams
genres: Literature, Fiction
ratings_count: 179
publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux