(Posted for Ann Roberts)
Having read many southern writers in my lifetime, Clyde Edgerton of North Carolina being one of them, I was pleased to see he has a new book out. The Night Train is set in 1963, in a small North Carolina town where race relations leave much to be desired. Two good friends of different races are both pursuing their dreams of making it big in the music world. Dwayne Hallston has discovered what his white family and friends refer to as “race music” and wants to sing and dance like James Brown, while his good friend Larry Lime Beacon of Time Reckoning Breathe on Me Nolan aspires to play jazz piano and finds a hemophiliac jazz musician, AKA The Bleeder, to instruct him. Each of the boys progress musically during the telling of this tale, and in a way, end up achieving their dreams. Dwayne and his group the Amazing Rumblers are finally featured on the Bobby Lee Reese Show (best known for its dog food snacking host) and Larry Lime takes the stage at the Frog, the local jazz dive, where he realizes that playing jazz is what he was meant to do. With a crazy cast of characters that one might expect to find in a small southern town, The Night Train is a sweet story of coming of age in the south. The story is told without sentimentality or anger, yet manages to evoke, in turn, righteous indignation and reminders of the simple joys of friendship in a not-so-simple time in our history. If all of this isn’t enough, the book also features two chickens, one of which is a very talented dancer.
Hardback, 215 pages
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