Fourteen-year-old Audrey Martin, with her Poindexter glasses and her
head humming the 3/4 meter of gospel music, knows she'll never get out
of Kentucky--but when her fingers touch the piano keys, the whole church
trembles. Her best friend, Caroline, daydreams about Hollywood stardom,
but both girls feel destined to languish in a slow-moving stopover town
in Montgomery County.
That is, until chance intervenes and a booking agent offers Audrey a
ticket to join the booming jazz scene in Harlem--an offer she can't
resist, not even for Caroline. And in New York City the music never
stops. Audrey flirts with love and takes the stage at the Apollo, with
its fast-dancing crowds and blinding lights. But fortunes can turn fast
in the city--young talent means tough competition, and for Audrey
failure is always one step away. Meanwhile, Caroline sinks into the
quiet anguish of a Black woman in a backwards country, where her
ambitions and desires only slip further out of reach.
Jacinda Townsend's remarkable first novel is a coming-of-age story made
at once gripping and poignant by the wild energy of the Jazz Era and the
stark realities of segregation. Marrying musical prose with lyric
vernacular, Saint Monkey delivers a stirring portrait of American
storytelling and marks the appearance of an auspicious new voice in
literary fiction.
