Title: Trumpet
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Author: Jackie Kay
Publisher: Random House, Incorporated
Date Published: February 1999
Format: Trade Cloth
Recommended by Thumper!
When jazz musician Billie Tipton died at the age of 72, the world was shocked by the secret he had harbored for all of his adult life: Billie Tipton was actually a woman who had passed as a man for the entirety of her professional career. How did she manage to keep such a secret from her friends and colleagues? How was she able to maintain an apparently traditional marriage and raise a family?
Based loosely on Tipton's real-life charade, TRUMPET is a fictionalized love story set against the backdrop of the jazz scene in Glasgow and London in the 1950s and 1960s. In this refreshingly original novel, writer Jackie Kay examines the complexities of gender, race, and relationships in a bold and inventive voice.
When trumpeter Joss Moody passes away, his widow, Millie, has little time for mourning. Almost immediately, the tabloids reveal a story announcing that Joss was a woman who had lived a lie. In the alternating voices of Millie and the Moody's grown son, Coleman, the story behind the elaborate charade begins to unfold. With the fluid musicality of a jazz composition, Kay's characters improvise with each other in a dance toward the truth. Peeling away each layer of Joss Moody's intricate lie raises traditional questions of identity and appearances, getting to the heart of what is really a story about love and compassion.
For those who are interested in jazz, Trumpet is a well-researched and awesome look at a vanished era. Those who love a good story will be hard-pressed to find a more capable storyteller than Jackie Kay. A prize-winning poet, Kay recently won the Guardian Fiction Prize, Britain's longest-running award, for Trumpet, her first novel.
Kelle Ruden, Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers