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Loading... Cahokia Jazzby Francis Spufford
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This is strange! I knew nothing about the Cahokia Mounds just east of St. Louis which is the setting for this alternate history of the place. The Cahokia Mounds were built by Mississippi Indians and apparently are evidence of a highly sophisticated urban indigenous society. The author sets the story in the 1920's. Cahokia is a "state" of the federal union where the indigenous peoples, white people, and Black people all live in somewhat harmony. Throughout the book three distinctive words describe each of these peoples. A horrible murder of a Black man occurs on the roof top of a government building. Things fall apart from there as each group begins to fear the other. Two detectives are called to investigate: Joe Barrow and his partner Phin Drummond; they became close friends during the war although Barrow is of mised race and Drummond is white. The Ku Klux Klan, a wealthy capitalist, the leaders of the indigenous peoples (Sun - the Man & Moon-his neice) all play major roles in the story. At times, funny, at times, brutal, and very often confusing. Then add Joe's musical ability to play the jazz piano.. This is really film noir with a handsome almost always good detective, a beautiful woman, corrupt cops, etc. The ending is over the top yet readable and enjoyable. The acknowledgments at the end are interesting. I can't really be sure if such a family as the Hashi did exist (the indigenous leaders). Overall, interesting, fun, frustrating, and worth the read. no reviews | add a review
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"Like Golden Hill, Cahokia Jazz inhabits a different version of America, and like Golden Hill it has a propulsive and brilliantly twisty plot set within a fully imagined world. Only this world is full of fog, cigarette smoke, dubious motives, danger, and dark deeds. And in the main character of Joe Barrow, we have a hero of truly heroic proportions, and a troubled soul to fall in love with. One 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 containing every race and creed. Among them, peace holds. Just about. But the 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 wailing clarinets, either to destruction or to rebirth"-- No library descriptions found. |
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Barrow and Drummond’s investigation has them interviewing everyone from wealthy industrialists to witch doctors, from Klan members to hereditary (but now ceremonial) royalty. All have both open and secret agendas, and no one is entirely who they seem to be. Can the murder be solved before the KKK marches into the central plaza and the city breaks down into chaos?
This being by Spufford, the noir setup frames a story about the individual and his responsibility to the moral failings of his time. In Golden Hill, the issue was the slave trade. In Cahokia Jazz, the issue, put most simply, is race—but more broadly, the balance one must find between loyalty to individuals and loyalty to one’s people. It’s difficult to describe how rich this book is in world-building detail, how emotionally convincing, how vivid in painting a Jazz Age metropolis that’s like Chicago but also like nothing we’ve seen: a city that makes the real-life cultural fusion of New Orleans seem simple by comparison.
Spufford keeps writing the books that I would try to write if I were a writer, and writing them better than anyone could humanly expect. ( )