**NATIONAL BESTSELLEROne of Billboard's "Ten Essential Music Books That Make Great Gifts"A vivid, joyful, moving window onto the life and heart of an American icon.**In the spring of 2018, Tom Piazza climbed into a 1977 Coupe de Ville with the great singer-songwriter John Prine to write an article for the Oxford American. Their Florida road trip ignited a deep friendship, full of tall tales over epic meals, long nights playing guitar and trading so...

The author of City of Refuge returns with a startling and powerful novel of race, violence, and identity set on the eve of the Civil War.The year is 1855. Blackface minstrelsy is the most popular form of entertainment in a nation about to be torn apart by the battle over slavery. Henry Sims, a fugitive slave and a brilliant musician, has escaped to Philadelphia, where he earns money living by his wits and performing on the street. He is befriended by James Douglass, leader...

It is 1883, and America is at a crossroads. At a tiny college in Upstate New York, an idealistic young professor has managed to convince Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Confederate memoirist Forrest Taylor, and romance novelist Lucy Comstock to participate in the first (and last) Auburn Writers’ Conference for a public discussion about the future of the nation. By turns brilliantly comic and startlingly prescient, The Auburn Confere...

“WhateverTom Piazza writes is touched with magic." —Douglas BrinkleyAcclaimed author Tom Piazza follows hisprize-winning novel City of Refuge and the post-Katrinaclassic Why New Orleans Matters with a dynamic collection ofessays and journalism about American music and American character, in DevilSent the Rain.“TomPiazza’s writing is filled with energy, and with tender, insightful words forthe brilliant and irascible, from Jimmy Martin to Norman Mailer. Time and timeagain, P...

Exploring the diverse landscape of American life, the stories in Blues and Trouble: Twelve Stories capture the lives of people caught between circumstance and their own natures or on the run from fate, from a Jewish couple encountering a dealer in Nazi memorabilia to the troubled family of a Gulf Coast fisherman awaiting a hurricane.Tom Piazza’s debut short story collection, originally published in 1996, heralded the arrival of a startlingly original and vital presence in ...

A vivid, joyful, moving window onto the life and heart of an American icon.In the spring of 2018, Tom Piazza climbed into a 1977 Coupe de Ville with the great singer-songwriter John Prine to write an article for the Oxford American. Their Florida road trip ignited a deep friendship, full of tall tales over epic meals, long nights playing guitar and trading songs, and visits back and forth between their homes in Nashville and New Orleans. Along the way, Pri...

Exploring the diverse landscape of American life, the stories in Blues and Trouble: Twelve Stories capture the lives of people caught between circumstance and their own natures or on the run from fate—from a Jewish couple encountering a dealer in Nazi memorabilia to the troubled family of a Gulf Coast fisherman awaiting a hurricane.Tom Piazza’s debut short story collection, originally published in 1996, heralded the arrival of a startlingly original and vital presence in American f...

It is 1883, and America is at a crossroads. At a tiny college in upstate New York, an idealistic young professor has managed to convince Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Confederate memoirist Forrest Taylor, and romance novelist Lucy Comstock to participate in the first (and last) Auburn Writers’ Conference for a public discussion about the future of the nation. By turns brilliantly comic and startlingly prescient, The Auburn Confere...

The year is 1855. Blackface minstrelsy is the most popular form of entertainment in a nation about to be torn apart by the battle over slavery. Henry Sims, a fugitive slave and a brilliant musician, has escaped to Philadelphia. He is befriended by a leader of a popular minstrel troupe struggling to compete with similar ensembles. Henry's skill could help the struggling troupe. Black and white performers are not allowed to appear together onstage. Together, the two concoct a masquerade to p...