I loved Ann Patchett's Bel Canto and Run is just as good. Race relations, politics, faith, family loyalty and death are just some of the major themes. Every character is so well drawn - from the emotionally spent former mayor of Boston to the young girl who stalks the mayor and his two adopted sons. A couple of passages are so memorable and full of meaning, that I've read them over and over: the inner thoughts of the old priest in the retirement home ("It would be possible to overlook just about anything if you were trained to constantly strain forward to see the power and the glory that way waiting up ahead. What a shame it would have been to miss God while waiting for Him."), and of the poor young black girl sprinting around the track at Harvard ("She no longer felt like touching all the dirt and the muck she had so patiently submitted herself to so that people would think she was a very nice girl. She was not such a very nice girl. Nobody who was very, very nice would ever work this hard to take something they wanted only for themselves.").