Jazz Moon
"A passionate, alive, and original novel about love, race, and jazz in 1920s Harlem and Paris — a moving story of traveling far to find oneself." — David Ebershoff, author of The Danish Girl
#HarlemRenaissance
On a sweltering summer night in 1925, beauties in beaded dresses mingle with hepcats in dapper suits on the streets of Harlem. The air is thick with reefer smoke, and jazz pours out of speakeasy doorways. Ben Charles and his devoted wife, Angeline, are among the locals crammed into a basement club to hear jazz and drink bootleg liquor. For aspiring poet Ben, the swirling, heady rhythms are a revelation. So is Baby Back Johnston, an ambitious trumpet player who flashes a devilish grin and blasts jazz dynamite from his horn. Ben finds himself drawn to the trumpeter–and to Paris where Baby Back says everything is happening.
In Paris, jazz and champagne flow eternally, and Blacks are welcomed as exotic celebrities, especially those from Harlem. It’s an easy life that quickly leaves Ben adrift and alone, craving solace through anonymous dalliances in the city’s decadent underground scene.
From chic Parisian cafés to seedy opium dens, his odyssey will bring new love, trials, and heartache, even as echoes from the past urge him to decide where true fulfillment and inspiration lie.
Jazz Moon won the Publishing Triangle’s Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction.
Reviews and Accolades
"Jazz Moon mashes up essences of Hurston and Hughes and Fitzgerald into a heady mixtape of a romance: driving and rhythmic as an Armstrong Hot Five record, sensuous as the small of a Cotton Club chorus girl’s back. I enjoyed it immensely. Frankly, I wish I’d written it." — LARRY DUPLECHAN, author of Blackbird
"Okonkwo’s sweeping debut novel combines the rich history of jazz’s golden age with the emotional turmoil of an African American male coming to terms with his sexuality." — LIBRARY JOURNAL
"In his debut novel, Joe Okonkwo composes a melodic tale that is as arousing and jarring as one might imagine the roaring jazz era of 1920’s Harlem." — LAMBDA LITERARY
"Jazz Moon is an unexpected and original grand romance: sweeping, evocative, and colorful. Okonkwo is an author to enjoy now and watch in the future." — FELICE PICANO, author of Like People in History
Photo left: A fan in Paris immersed in Jazz Moon
“Mellow. Just a sound that was blue and smooth. One moment it floated up with the reefer smoke, the next it was low down. Baby Back took that horn through a swirling maze of rhythm as the band underscored his every lick. He caressed those flats and sharps, fondled those swinging eighth notes, fingered that melody till it cried. ”
— from Jazz Moon