From “one of the most original minds in contemporary literature” (Nick Hornby) the bestselling and award-winning author of Golden Hill delivers a noirish detective novel set in the 1920s that reimagines how American history would be different if, instead of being decimated, indigenous populations had thrived.Like his earlier novel Golden Hill , Francis Spufford’s Cahokia Jazz inhabits a different version of America, now through the lens of a subtly altered 1920s—a fully imagined world full of fog, cigarette smoke, dubious motives, danger, dark deeds. And in the main character of Joe Barrow, we have a hero of truly epic proportions, a troubled soul to fall in love with as you are swept along by a propulsive and brilliantly twisty plot.On a snowy night at the end of winter, Barrow and his partner find a body on the roof of a skyscraper. Down below, streetcar bells ring, factory whistles blow, Americans drink in speakeasies and dance to the tempo of modern times. But this is Cahokia, the ancient indigenous city beside the Mississippi living on as a teeming industrial metropolis, filled with people of every race and creed. Among them, peace holds. Just about. But that corpse on the roof will spark a week of drama in which this altered world will spill its secrets and be brought, against a soundtrack of jazz clarinets and wailing streetcars, either to destruction or rebirth.
My Review:
Cahokia Jazz comes out next week on February 6, 2024, and you can purchase HERE! I loved this book and am going to read more from this author!!
"The official name of that train may be the Trans-Continent, but everyone in the city calls it . . . ?"
"The Usunhiyi," said Barrow. It was an Anopa name you couldn't fail to know: the train went by overhead twice a day, westbound and eastbound, as inevitable as the transit of the sun.
"Which, as you probably don't know, means 'the Evening Land?'
An ill-starred name. It goes west, you see, and west is the direction of sunset and endings. West is where the dead go.
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