Every day in the week leading up to the release of my brand-new book The Lost English Girl on March 7, I’m revealing a story, fun fact, or other tidbit about the book. Follow along each day to learn more about the book!
The Lost English Girl has many nods to my love of Jazz.
No matter whether it’s conscious or not, every author puts a little bit of themselves into their books. It might manifest through characters bearing similar traits to people in their lives, or perhaps a setting that they’ve long been fascinated with.
So many little bits of myself are sprinkled through The Lost English Girl, but one of the very obvious ones is my love of Jazz.
Growing up, there was always music playing in the house, and often Dad would put on one of our many Billie Holiday albums, Take Five by the Dave Brubreck Quartet, or Stan Getz and Joāo Gilberto’s Getz/Gilberto. When I went off to college, I sought out my university’s swing dancing society and learned how to dance to some of the incredible music I’d always loved. Even now, my record collection is mostly albums from Jazz and Blues greats, although my fiancé is slowly helping me make sure our mutual love of rock and soul is represented.
When I was sitting down to write the character of Joshua Levinson, an ambitious young man who dreams of leaving Liverpool to do something more with his life, I knew that there was only really one profession for him: musician. I made Joshua into a saxophone player, working as a gigging musician for dance bands playing in Liverpool’s famous ballroom scene. His dream is to go to New York and develop his career so that he can one day become a band leader in his own right.
However, life doesn’t always work out the way we plan, as Joshua finds out. When the book opens in 1939, he’s working as a fill-in for the many bands on Manhattan’s Swing Street (52nd Street).
Swing Street held some of the most famous clubs of the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s like the 21 Club, the Famous Door, Jimmy Ryan’s, and Kelly’s Stable. Virtually every significant musician of Jazz’s golden era played a stand at one of these clubs, with some of them serving as the leaders of or players in house bands. If you were an audience member at one of these clubs, you might have heard early premiers of songs that are now Jazz standards like “Body and Soul.”
I also couldn’t resist the urge to reference a little bit more of New York Jazz history in mentioning one of the most famous performances of the twentieth century. In one scene, Joshua relates to his sister the story of seeing Billie Holiday’s legendary performance of “Strange Fruit” at Café Society in Greenwich Village. Famously, the wait staff would stop serving. The lights would dim until only a spotlight shone on Holiday’s face. She would sing the song with her eyes closed. There would be no encore.
I have always wished that I could have been an audience member at Café Society to see the great Billie Holiday sing her signature song. Perhaps second best is mining history for details and threading through those details related to my own interests in order to create a richer, more full story for readers.
Want to learn more about The Lost English Girl? Check back tomorrow or follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and don’t forget that there is still time to preorder your copy of The Lost English Girl in print, ebook, or audiobook!