What happens when the sum of the man no longer equals the whole? That's what a washed up entertainer contemplates after he is diagnosed with an incurable disease in journalist Leonard Pitts' masterful first novel 'Before I Forget.'

In his heyday in the 1970's, Mo Johnson had a swagger like Usher and stacks like Jay-Z. But now, he's long forgotten and full of regret. Besides his recent diagnosis of early on-set Alzheimer's, his personal life is in shambles. His father, Jack, is dying, and his son, Trey, is involved in a stickup gone awry.In an effort to reconnect with Trey, Mo takes him on a road trip to Los Angeles to visit his dad and realizes that unresolved baggage from his relationship with Jack has snaked its way into that of his with his son. Before he forgets, Mo sets out to set things right.

Pitts, long acclaimed for his Pulitzer Prize-winning work as a syndicated columnist, explores relationships between father and son in a novel laced with taut dialogue and description in a journey of self-discovery and an intense multigenerational pilgrimage.

Below is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of 'Before I Forget':

He forgot. That was how it started.

He took a wrong turn somewhere-never did find out where-on a route he had driven three times a month for five years. Three times a month from his home in Bowie, up to Shucky's, a restaurant and bar in Fell's Point, a couple miles and a world away from the tourist traps of the Inner Harbor.

Three times a month to sit in with the band, noodle some jazz standards, maybe sing some of the old hits if somebody in the crowd called out for them and he was in a good enough mood. (Somebody always called out and he was always in a good enough mood.) Three times a month.

Until that day, when he forgot. Until he took a wrong turn on a route he had driven a hundred times and found himself on a street of boarded-up row houses, night shadows slanting ominously, corner boys glancing menace as the big, black Escalade rolled slow and shiny down the street, looking for Shucky's. Looking for something he recognized. Finding only corner boys who straightened up now from crouched positions, adjusted pants whose crotches rode somewhere below their knees, making ready to come see who this buster was rolling up in here all slow and shit.

He pressed the accelerator. Got out of there.

It is hard to get lost in a Cadillac Escalade. Touch the screen recessed into the gleaming wood of the console and you bring up maps and a computer voice that tells you where to turn. Touch a button and a live human being spots you with a GPS tracker and helps you get wherever it is you're trying to go.

Later, he would wonder why he hadn't done either. Right now, all he felt was annoyance building itself steadily toward anger. Worse, it was unspecified anger, anger without function, focus, or release. It was just...how could this happen? How could you lose a place you knew? You felt so stupid. So helpless and frustrated.

He hammered the steering wheel with the flat of his palm. It made no sense.

Yet there it was. Somehow, he had taken a turn or missed an exit and now Baltimore, where he'd been hundreds of times, was an alien city rising above him, glaring down at him, pitiless, unfriendly, unknown. And the numbers on the digital clock kept ticking forward relentlessly. Twenty minutes to the first set. Twenty minutes. He had never missed a gig in his life. Not even in the old days, when he was using. Never. The steering wheel took another hit.

The lights from the gas station on the corner of the next block shone like a beacon. He pulled in gratefully. Heads turned at the sight of the Escalade. The man in the greasy overalls with the cigarette drooping off his lips, the woman in the banged up 14-year-old Toyota filled with children, took note of its passing and agitated as he was, he paused to check himself in the mirror, slip on the Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses, make sure he was looking his best. He knew it was vanity, but he excused that in himself. Vanity was a job hazard in his line of work. You always had to look your best. You never knew when you might be recognized.

He was not recognized. They knew he was somebody-you could see that in the way their eyes trailed after him. But nobody called his name or pointed his way and cried, "Aren't you...didn't you used to be..."