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    Wild Women and the Blues: Chapter Sampler
    Wild Women and the Blues: Chapter Sampler
    Wild Women and the Blues: Chapter Sampler
    Ebook37 pages27 minutes

    Wild Women and the Blues: Chapter Sampler

    By Denny S. Bryce

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    About this ebook

    Special Sneak Peek!
     
    Be among the first to experience Jazz-age Chicago as it comes to vibrant life in Denny S. Bryce’s evocative debut novel that weaves together the stories of a grieving film student in 2015 and an ambitious chorus girl in Chicago’s Black Belt in 1925 as they both come to grips with loss, forgiveness, and the limitations—and surprises—of love.
     
    1925: Chicago is the jazz capital of the world, and the Dreamland Café is the ritziest black-and-tan club in town. Honoree Dalcour is a sharecropper’s daughter, willing to work hard and dance every night on her way to the top. Dreamland offers a path to the good life, socializing with celebrities like Louis Armstrong and filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. But Chicago is also awash in bootleg whiskey, gambling, and gangsters. And a young woman driven by ambition might risk more than she can stand to lose.
     
    2015: Film student Sawyer Hayes arrives at the bedside of 110-year-old Honoree Dalcour, still reeling from a devastating loss that has taken him right to the brink. Sawyer has rested all his hope on this frail but formidable woman, the only living link to the legendary Oscar Micheaux. If he’s right—if she can fill in the blanks in his research, perhaps he can complete his thesis and begin a new chapter in his life. But the links Honoree makes are not ones he’s expecting . . .
     
    Piece by piece, Honoree reveals her past and her secrets, while Sawyer fights tooth and nail to keep his. It’s a story of courage and ambition, hot jazz, and illicit passions. And as past meets present, for Honoree, it’s a final chance to be truly heard and seen before it’s too late. No matter the cost . . .
     
    Advance Praise for Wild Women and the Blues
     
    “An ambitious and stunning debut . . . a sparkling cocktail of evocative detail, world-wise characters and heartfelt prose . . . celebrates the glam, danger, and promise of Chicago during the Jazz Age, giving readers an intricate, multi-generational story.”
    —Stephanie Dray, New York Times bestselling author
     
    “You’re in a master’s hands, leading you through the emotional and sometimes dangerous steps linking present and past in this intricate, bold, unforgettable dance.”
    —Susanna Kearsley, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author
     
    "Bryce’s atmospheric debut novel catapults readers into the oft-overlooked era of the 1920’s Jazz Age. An intriguing cast of characters and compelling storytelling . . . deftly delivers what historical fiction has been missing."
    —Farrah Rochon, USA Today bestselling author
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKensington Books
    Release dateNov 17, 2020
    ISBN9781496736857
    Wild Women and the Blues: Chapter Sampler
    Author

    Denny S. Bryce

    Denny S. Bryce is an award-winning and bestselling author of historical fiction, including Wild Women and the Blues. She is also an adjunct professor in the MFA program at Drexel University, a book critic for NPR, and a member of the Historical Novel Society, Women’s Fiction Writers Association, and Tall Poppy Writers. Currently, she resides in Savannah, Georgia.

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      Book preview

      Wild Women and the Blues - Denny S. Bryce

      it

      Part 1

      Chapter 1

      Sawyer

      Friday, June 5, 2015

      Chicago

      On the fifth floor of the Bronzeville Senior Living Facility, I stand outside the smallest room in the world, doing my best to ignore the dropped ceiling and square linoleum tiles, stoking my claustrophobia.

      No windows. No air. No natural light. Just stark-white walls out of focus like cheesecloth over a camera lens.

      The old woman in the bed adds to my anxiety, as does the fact that I’m almost out of cash. But nothing will defeat me. Not this go-round. Not with the help of the old lady in the bed—Honoree Dalcour, my last great hope.

      The backpack digs into my shoulder. I check the time on my cell phone, eight hours until my connecting flight to Paris. Six hours (fewer if I take a shuttle back to O’Hare) to coax the 110-year-old woman in the bed (who could die at any second or who could be dead now) into telling me a story to fix my life or more likely help me finish my film project.

      You see, I’m a graduate student chasing a doctorate in media studies. My documentary thesis focuses on the legendary Black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux in 1925. The project, however, has a gaping hole, smack in the center. A hole I haven’t thought about in over a year. Not since my sister, Azizi, was killed in a car crash with me behind the

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