Synopses & Reviews
Life in the mountains of eastern Kentucky is bleak, especially for a black girl in the era of segregation. Quiet Audrey Martin plays the piano and looks up to her beautiful best friend, Caroline Wallace, “the shiniest pearl she knows.” With Caroline’s father in jail for killing her mother, her life represents everything that Audrey needs to run from. When a booking agent from the Apollo offers Audrey a ticket to join the booming jazz scene in Harlem, she can’t resist, not even for Caroline. In different worlds, following different paths, Audrey’s star soars as she tours the country and flirts with true love. Meanwhile, Caroline sinks into the trials and tribulations of a black woman in a backward country, where her ambitions only seem to move further out of reach. A powerful coming-of-age story, Saint Monkey marks the arrival of a talented new voice in American fiction.
Review
"A novel of immense depth and tenderness. Townsend's prose recalls the music of Toni Morrison, and takes us on a soulful and deeply satisfying journey into the heart of Appalachia, and beyond." Samrat Upadhyay, author of Arresting God in Kathmandu
Review
" is an absolute marvel of a book. Jacinda Townsend is dazzling as she transports the reader to a different time and place--the 1950s, rural Kentucky, and Harlem at the height of the jazz era. Two young girls, Audrey and Caroline, fight for a place in the world and, though their paths at times diverge, their journeys and this writer will utterly captivate you." Roxanne Gay, author of Ayiti
Review
"This is a breathtakingly insightful, suspenseful, and gorgeously realized novel of cruelty and sorrow, anger and forgiveness, improvisation and survival, and the transcendent beauty of nature and art." Donna Seaman
Review
"Impressive." Booklist, Starred Review
Review
"Takes us backstage at the Apollo and into the smoky, late-night clubs where the art of jazz is fashioned before our eyes... The reader is buffeted by the transformative waves of race and music in America." Carmela Ciuraru New York Times
Review
"Vivid." Jonathan Odell Star Tribune
Review
"Captures the imagination and the heart." Kasia Hopkins News Gazette
Review
"[A] novel to curl up with... Irresistible." Jacinta Howard Upscale Magazine
Synopsis
A stunning debut novel of two girls raised in hardship, separated by fortune, and reunited through tragedy.
Synopsis
Fourteen-year-old Audrey Martin, with her Poindexter glasses and her head humming the 3/4 meter of gospel music, knows she'll never get out of Kentucky--but when her fingers touch the piano keys, the whole church trembles. Her best friend, Caroline, daydreams about Hollywood stardom, but both girls feel destined to languish in a slow-moving stopover town in Montgomery County.
Synopsis
A young woman leaves Kentucky for the Harlem jazz scene, endangering a childhood friendship and embarking on a tumultuous new life.
About the Author
Jacinda Townsend studied at Harvard University and Duke University Law School before receiving her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She lives in Bloomington, Indiana, and teaches creative writing at Indiana University. Saint Monkey is her first novel.