American jazz musician Eddie Piron investigates after the drummer for his band turns up floating face down in the Seine during the Nazi occupation of Paris.
In 1949, jazz pianist Sonny-Rhett Payne left New York for Paris, to be free from racism and his family's disapproval. Now Sonny's grandson has come to New York for a memorial concert. There, the 8-year-old begins to understand the forces that drove Sonny into exile. Paule Marshall is an award-winning author and distinguished professor of creative writing at New York University.
"Berlin, 1939. The Hot-Time Swingers, a popular German American jazz band, have been forbidden to play live because the Nazis have banned their 'degenerate music.' After escaping to Paris, where they meet Louis Armstrong, the band's brilliant young trumpet-player, Hieronymus Falk, is arrested in a café by the Gestapo. It is June 1940. He is never heard from again. He is twenty years old, a German citizen. And he is black. Berlin, 1992. Falk, now...