Goonan's ambitious Queen City Jazz transformed Cincinnati into a surrealistic symphony on themes of American pop culture; her even more ambitious sequel, Mississippi Blues, seeks to explore some of the key sources of American mythology by means of an archetypal river journey from Cincinnati to New Orleans -- what some regard as the classic American story. There is a good deal in it that is unconvincing, but on the whole it succeeds often enough to make it one of the more important novels of the year.