Such Sweet Thunder

Told from the perspective of a boy, Amerigo Jones, Such Sweet Thunder is set in Kansas City during the 1920s and '30s, an era marred by racial segregation and relentless daily injustices. And yet Vincent Carter's account of a black youth whose dreams collide with the bitter realities of the day is filled with love and longing for a time and place enriched by a vibrant, burgeoning, and widely influential jazz culture and a fierce feeling for family and community. When Richard Wright's widow, Elle, first read Such Sweet Thunder in the 1960s, she praised it as the first great picture of childhood by a black male writer. Such Sweet Thunder is a jazz song of a book whose sweeping orchestral feel and extended dialogue riffs make it unforgettable.