March 2012 Newsletter
March Read
Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
One night in Paris, star trumpet player Hieronymous Falk is taken into German custody and is not seen again. Falk is a member of The Hot Time Swingers, a jazz band composed of African American and German members, popular in the nightclubs of 1939 Berlin. Jazz, however, is less popular with the Nazis who consider it a degenerate form of music. Hiero has another strike against him. He is a “Rhineland Bastard”–the child of a French African father and a white German mother. This population was considered a threat to the racial purity of Germany.
The band flees to Paris believing that they will be safer there, but the city soon falls and Hiero is arrested. Only rumours of his whereabouts ever surface. Fifty years later, band members Sid Griffiths and Chip Jones return to Europe, hoping to uncover the truth about Hiero’s disappearance and to finally make peace with the past.
Join us throughout March to discuss Esi Edugyan’s Scotiabank Giller Prize winning novel.
Upcoming Discussions
April
Girls Fall Down by Maggie Helwig
- eBook
- Talking Book (restricted to Print Disabled patrons)
May
Please Look After Mom by Kyŏng-suk Sin
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