Jazz

About “Jazz”

It is winter in 1926, seven years after the Armistice, in the City around Lenox Avenue, where people have come from points south and west in search of promise. Joe Trace, a door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products in his fifties, shoots his lover, Dorcas, an impetuous eighteen-year-old. At her funeral, his wife, Violet, a hard-working hairdresser who talks to birds and suffers from mental instability, attempts to disfigure the corpse with a knife. The story is told through a mysterious voice that moves between past, present, and future, exploring the blues rooted in the legacy of slavery. The novel captures the complexity of black urban life with rich history, legend, and emotion.