Set in a small town in the deep South where everyone is depressed and all the residents seem to be weirdly obsessed with a deaf mute named Singer. There isn't really a plot and yet I could not put it down. The writing is really intimate and we enter each characters life and mind, their fears and hopes and their search for purpose in life. 
 Occasionally she drops a bomb in the story and it's really interesting to see the ripples through the town in each characters life.
 I was kind of surprised it's an American classic because it's very anti-capitalist and really bigs up communism and Black rights in the 1940's which are not the American dream!