Alice Coltrane (1937-2007) was an accomplished musician well before she met John Coltrane, the legendary jazz saxophonist, in the early 1960s. Born Alice McLeod to a musical family on the East End of Detroit, she was exposed at a young age to black religious and folk music in her church, where she served as the three choirs' pianist and arranger, and to modern jazz at home, where her half-brother Ernest Farrow was an accomplished musician, and throughout the Motor City, as she studied under and played alongside well known artists such as Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris, Yusef Lateef and Sonny Stitt. Her fellow musicians described her as an innovative pianist, whose phrasing integrated her knowledge of those different musical genres into a unique style. Unfortunately her talent earned her little recognition, due to the double prejudice of race and gender, as many "girl musicians" who were not singers or hard driving musicians were not taken seriously, and because most jazz musicians gained their fame in New York, Los Angeles or elsewhere.

McLeod decided to further her career by moving to Paris along with a local scat singer, who she married before leaving Detroit, but she soon returned to her home town with her young daughter after she divorced him. She performed locally with Terry Gibbs' band, until she met John Coltrane on tour. The two married soon after, and after three years of being a mother to their three children, Trane invited her to replace McCoy Tyner as the group's pianist in 1965, as he replaced his classic quartet with musicians that better fit his abstract music that stretched the boundaries of jazz and incorporated elements of Eastern music. Trane's health failed, and he died in 1967 of liver cancer at the age of 41. However, Alice continued where her husband and teacher left off, and continued to explore his music in her own fashion, as she used her past experiences to produce her own music that incorporated avant garde jazz with Indian music. She recorded more than 20 albums over the next 40 years, including Ptah, the El Daoud (1970), Universal Consciousness (1972), Transcendence (1977) and Translinear Light (2004), and became a spiritual leader of a Hindu center in California. The success of Translinear Light led to a brief comeback in 2006, as she played with her son Ravi Coltrane, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Roy Haynes, but passed away the following year.

Alice Coltrane's life and music has long been under-recognized, and Franya Berkman chose her as the subject of her PhD thesis in ethnomusicology, which she extended into this work. Through interviews with Alice and those musicians who performed with her, Berkman effectively dispels the falsehoods about this talented musician and spiritual seeker, and the reader gains an appreciation for her talent prior to, during, and after her years with Trane. This book would be best appreciated by those with some familiarity with Alice Coltrane's music, as it is more of a musical analysis than a biography, but it is an excellent introduction to this amazingly talented artist. ( )