Minding Frankie by Maeve Binchy

A Dublin neighborhood full of many of the characters bands together to help a young single father raise his daughter.  Aware she will not survive her baby's birth, fatally ill Stella tells alcoholic loner Noel that he is the father. He doesn't remember having actual sex with Stella and is far from certain he wants or can handle the responsibility. But with the help and encouragement of his cousin Emily, in Dublin on an extended visit from New York, Noel stops drinking and takes custody of baby Frankie after Stella's death at St. Brigid's Hospital.

His transformation from loser to responsible, loving father and his struggle to convince his uptight social worker that he is fit to raise Frankie forms the central plot. But there are many subplots as there often are in Binchy novels.  But she is the queen of connecting everyone together, though in this story it wasn't as far fetched as other books I've read.  Social worker Moira seems like the stereotypical uptight bureaucrat at first, but her loneliness and painful self-awareness of her failure to connect to others become increasingly heart-wrenching. Moira has to overcome an unhappy family situation, as does Lisa, a graphic artist who moves in as Noel's platonic housemate to escape her parents' sham marriage, although she's in her own sham love affair with a flashy restaurateur. Circling everywhere, is cousin Emily, who on a whim comes to visit family she has never met but finds herself a family far more than she ever imagined.

Mave Binchy has this wonderful way of weaving a story together.  But she deals with everyday life including the good and bad - death, birth, addiction that feels believeable yet not too sweet.  Having to read when one of the older characters died from cancer was heart breaking as it is very close to home.  My favorite book by Maeve Binchy will always "Evening Class" but this one was right up there.