"Run," by Ann Patchett; HarperCollins, $25.95

Within 24 hours, Ann Patchett's latest novel takes readers to the fish of Walden Pond, the speeches of Eugene Debs, the heartbreak of lost mothers and the complications of race relations and family.

"Run," Patchett's fourth novel and first since 2001's "Bel Canto," takes place on a snowy day in Massachusetts. It begins with former Boston Mayor Bernard Doyle, a widower with three sons. The oldest, Sullivan, has absconded to Africa. Doyle's two adopted sons, Tip and Teddy, remained close at hand and close to the heart.

The Doyles, who are white, adopted the younger boys, who are black, when Teddy was an infant and Tip a toddler. Just a few years after adopting the boys, Doyle's wife, Bernadette, dies after an illness.

Patchett's book sails along, jumping from different generations and points of view and yet remaining seamless. The scenario appears a bit unusual and idealistic: a well-to-do white couple adopting two young black boys, who grow up worshipping their Irish-Catholic mother — both her memory and a statue resembling her.

Tip grows up science-minded, with an eye toward the water and a passion for fish. And although Doyle had hopes of politics for his boys, Teddy falls in love with the Catholic Church.

"As children they had been so eager to please him that they had spoiled him into thinking that they would grow up to be exactly the men he wanted them to be," Patchett writes. "Even now, when it was abundantly clear that Doyle had failed, he could not entirely abandon his drive to shape them. ... Had Doyle known what would be enticing to boys, he would never have shown them the Cathedral of the Holy Cross or the Atlantic Ocean, for that matter."

The protective father carefully guides his children through life until a car accident on a snowy night changes everything. As Tip walks across the street after an argument with Doyle, a woman named Tennessee Alice Moser pushes Tip out of the way of an approaching car. The insertion of Tennessee — and her 11-year-old daughter, Kenya — into the Doyles' life is monumental.

"Run" examines what ties people together and what holds them apart — be it race, class or family.

With "Run," Patchett continues her streak of well-defined characters and compelling plot lines. Most recently, "Bel Canto" won the PEN/Faulkner Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. (The book was also a selection of the now-gone Honolulu Advertiser Book Club in 2003.)

Patchett's story of the Doyles and those intertwined with them is touching, sincere and honest. The power of luck, love, coincidence, faith and community are at hand in this family's life, and their lives are all the fuller because of it.