Fast Charlie

At Christmas 2003, New York-based film critic Godfrey Cheshire is visiting his family in North Carolina when his cousin Charlie Silver tells him something startling. Charlie inherited Midway Plantation, the ancestral home of his and Cheshire's extended family, and has been its devoted caretaker. But now Charlie and his wife Dena have made a decision: They want to move Midway - the antebellum manor house and several outbuildings - to a new location to escape Raleigh's encroaching sprawl.

It's a long hot summer for Charlie Boyd. He's sixteen, his hormones are raging and he's just found out his mother is having an affair with his father's best friend. One thing takes his mind off his problems, the mysterious woman down the street who has visitors day and night, and has just advertised for a gardener. But she is forgotten when a tragic family event tumbles Charlie into a world of pain, a pain so intense Charlie thinks no-one can help him. He's wrong. Someone can. Maggie, the beautiful French stranger. She's a professional, and she specialises in pain. Giving it, exploring it, sharing it, all for money. So Charlie falls in love, and despite herself so does she, drawn to this troubled boy who takes all the pain she can give and uses it to heal himself. And as Charlie heals, he turns that healing back onto her, his Mistress.

The opening title reads: "A comedy with a smile–and perhaps a tear". As she leaves the charity hospital and passes a church wedding, Edna deposits her new baby with a pleading note in a limousine and goes off to commit suicide. The limo is stolen by thieves who dump the baby by a garbage can. Charlie the Tramp finds the baby and makes a home for him. Five years later Edna has become an opera star but does charity work for slum youngsters in hope of finding her boy. A doctor called by Edna discovers the note with the truth about the Kid and reports it to the authorities who come to take him away from Charlie. Before he arrives at the Orphan Asylum Charlie steals him back and takes him to a flophouse. The proprietor reads of a reward for the Kid and takes him to Edna. Charlie is later awakened by a kind policeman who reunites him with the Kid at Edna's mansion.

'When Charlie's good he's great. But when he's bad he's better!' John Ibrahim, best-selling author of Last King of the Cross

Sam Hopkins was a Texas country bluesman of the highest caliber whose career began in the 1920s and stretched all the way into the 1980s. Along the way, Hopkins watched the genre change remarkably, but he never appreciably altered his mournful Lone Star sound, which translated onto both acoustic and electric guitar. Hopkins' nimble dexterity made intricate boogie riffs seem easy, and his fascinating penchant for improvising lyrics to fit whatever situation might arise made him a beloved blues troubadour.