Cahokia Jazz
Written by Francis Spufford
Narrated by Andy Ingalls
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
The bestselling and award-winning author of Golden Hill delivers a “smoky, brooding noir set in the 1920s” (Slate) 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 filled with fog, cigarette smoke, dubious motives, danger, and dark deeds. In the main character of hard-boiled detective 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.
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 people of every race and creed. Among them, peace holds. Just about. Yet 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.
“Atmospheric…many of us will recognize our own held-breath bafflement, caught, as we are, on the darkling plain of our own barely believable times” (The Washington Post).
Editor's Note
Classic noir…
Spufford (“Golden Hill”) reimagines the Jazz Age in an America where Indigenous peoples kept their strongholds (and their populations). When a brutal murder shines a light on racial dissension in Cahokia, a Native-run city, Detective Joe Barrow follows the trail through Cahokia’s diverse enclaves (and many speakeasies). Classic noir, speculative history, and real-world relevancy collide and combine beautifully.
Francis Spufford
Francis Spufford began as the author of four highly praised books of nonfiction. His first book, I May Be Some Time, won the Writers’ Guild Award for Best Nonfiction Book of 1996, the Banff Mountain Book Prize, and a Somerset Maugham Award. It was followed by The Child That Books Built, Backroom Boys, and most recently, Unapologetic. But with Red Plenty in 2012 he switched to the novel. Golden Hill won multiple literary prizes on both sides of the Atlantic; Light Perpetual was longlisted for the Booker Prize. In England he is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Historical Society. He teaches writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
More audiobooks from Francis Spufford
Red Plenty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Light Perpetual: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Golden Hill: A Novel of Old New York Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Growing Up Weightless Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for Cahokia Jazz
6 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This was a great book. A new favorite. I don't know Spufford's background, but he depicted indigenous people very well, especially in the modern world, and made us human. I thank him for that. I also wish this was our timeline.