Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford

 

The effects of some of the experiences from our trip to various Native American sites last summer--plus the recognition of the human history in the Badlands and the Black Hills, and in Big Bend--along with my relatively recent discovery that modern noir makes my soul sing made me pretty much a target market/audience for this novel: It's a noir, set in Cahokia, in the 1920s! Good thing is, it works; more than that, it's a symphony. The noir stuff works, and all the alternative-history-mongering plays a happy counterpoint; thematic concerns typical to noir (loyalty and its costs, privilege and its power) dance with all sorts of concerns about race and racism and all the nastiness in the heart of America connected to them. Beautiful, smart, honest, and empathetic.