Grady's novel reads with the velvety tempo of the jazz music of its
day. . . . Grady fearlessly explores heated race relations and the masks
we all assume. --Chatelaine
With his curly black hair and his wicked grin, everyone swoons and
thinks of Frank Sinatra when Navy musician Jackson Lewis takes the
stage. It's World War II, and while stationed in St. John's,
Newfoundland, Jack meets the well-heeled Vivian Clift, a local girl who
has never stepped off the Rock and longs to see the world. They marry
against Vivian's family's wishes--there's something about Jack that they
just don't like--and as the war draws to a close, the couple travels to
Windsor to meet Jack's family.
But when Vivian meets Jack's mother and brother, everything she thought
she knew about her husband gets called into question. They don't live in
the dream home Jack depicted, they all look different from one
another--different from anyone Vivian has ever seen--and after weeks of
waiting to meet Jack's father, he never materializes.
Steeped in jazz and big-band music, spanning pre- and post-war
Windsor-Detroit, St. John's, Newfoundland, and 1950s Toronto, this is an
arresting, heartwrenching novel about fathers and sons, love and
sacrifice, race relations and a time in our history when the world was
on the cusp of momentous change.
