Book Description

Multicultural fiction. A racial adaptation of Cain and Abel, set to a score of modern Jazz, obsession, and revenge. In 1927 Mississippi, a black tenant farmer?s wife gives birth to unusual twins?Calvin, who is dark, and Joe, who is light enough to pass for white. As they grow up, the boys learn that color is worth more than brotherhood in the Jim Crow South, and they fall into a trap that was set for them by generations of racial discord. After a violent fight, Joe disappears and Calvin is convicted for his murder. In 1949 Joe steps off a bus in New York City, passing himself off as a white man. Birdland has just opened, Jazz is king, and the entertainment industry is in a cold-sweat panic over McCarthy?s Blacklist. Joe finds work as a singer with a bebop band and meets Magda, a Greek studio violinist, who beguiles him with her blue eyes and broken English. Over time, Joe is also drawn into a moth-and-flame bond with black trumpet player Doc Calhoun, who sees through his racial masquerade and warns him of its pitfalls. And at Doc?s side is the unforgettable Pearl, who holds them all together, despite her struggle with heroin addiction. Slowly, Joe?s fear of exposure takes a turn for the irrational. He begins to see his brother in the shadows, and the radio coverage of the HUAC hearings taunts him with its daily question: Are you now or have you ever been . . . ? Bluestone Rondo is a story of life-and-death choices?a Jazz masterpiece of love and hate that leads to two volatile plot twists and one fatal showdown.