CROSS DOG BLUES: Book One of A Great Long Story to Tell
Richard M. Brock
Paperback
(Bogie Road Publishing, April 6, 2015)
AMAZON #1 BESTSELLER in Blues BooksAMAZON BESTSELLER in Hist. Thrillers & Hist. FictionA fast and powerful historical thriller about the birth of the Delta blues.ā...this is storytelling at its best...ā -- Fortean Times Magazineā...poignant...heartening...insightful...ā -- Kirkus ReviewsIn 1915, in a moonlit room in a boarding house in Texas, Charlie Patton -- the enigmatic inventor of blues music -- founds a shadowy alliance with Huddie āLead Bellyā Ledbetter and Blind Lemon Jefferson. A pact is made, and the seeds of revolution are sown. Back at the Dockery Plantation in the Mississippi Delta, with the help of the likes of Son House, Howlinā Wolf, Robert Johnson, and others, Charlieās plan spreads across the South, and then across the country. But these bluesmen have no way of knowing where this dangerous road will lead. Nor do they know the Ku Klux Klan is watching.In 2002, Franklyn OāConnor -- an adventurous and penniless youth -- sits at a lonely bar in the train station of his small upstate New York hometown holding a one-way ticket to the Crossroads in the Mississippi Delta. There he hopes to track down his deadbeat father, who walked out on his family when Frank was five. With nothing but his rucksack and the unsolicited assistance of a little old man called Furry Jenkins, Frank soon unwittingly drifts into the middle of a combustible racial feud at the intersection of a still divided society. A shocking truth waiting down the line.With the rambling pioneers of blues music leading an unforgettable cast of characters, this raw, rousing and adventurous debut novel delivers a breathtaking view of life, livinā, love and hate in America in the 20th century, and the mysterious beginnings of the music that provided the soundtrack for it all...THE BLUES.