Cahokia Jazz

 

Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford 464 pages

 

I love this novel so much that I am going to claim that it will be one of the must-reads of 2024!

 

What Amazon says:  Francis Spufford’s Cahokia Jazz inhabits a different version of America, now through the lens of a subtly altered 1920s—a fully imagined world full of fog, cigarette smoke, dubious motives, danger, dark deeds. And in the main character of 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.

On a 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, filled with people of every race and creed. Among them, peace holds. Just about. But 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.

 

What I thought of it: This novel has it all! I was captivated by the opening scene that sets a harrowing stage of what is to come to the heartbreaking last scene. Part alternate history, part noir thriller, part mythology legends, with science, jazz, crime, mob scenes and the KKK all thrown in to make a highly readable novel.

 

Cahokia Jazz is a complicated, complex, easy to follow and fabulous novel. Therefore, it receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.