A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

A New York Times Book review Book of the Year. Hmmmm. Some folks have a year when they lose a boy friend or find themselves tangled with folks carrying sad baggage or experience a death in the family. Tassie Keltjin is having all those years at once. A farm girl with no context for the world she enters in a small liberal college town, she is unprepared for the issues of race, class, and war in this year following 9/11. She takes a job as a nanny for a white "live in our heads" couple who have adopted a biracial child. Many of the resulting conversations are either enlightening or uncomfortably familiar.