Of Song and Water

by Joseph Coulson

Book Overview

Moving from the Great Lakes to the jazz bars of Detroit and Chicago, Of Song and Water is a tale of singlehanded sailors and jazz musicians, of working-class dreams blighted by family duty, personal... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0981987389
• ISBN13: 9780981987385
• Release Date: June 2010
• Publisher: Archipelago Books
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.08 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

A deeply immersive and moving story.

Book of the Year Award-winning author Joseph Coulson presents Of Song and Water, a novel that draws upon the heady excitement of jazz, the solace of braving open waters in a sailboat, and the myriad complexity of familial obligations and painful memories. Following the life of Coleman Moore, a jazz guitarist facing mid-life doubts and seeking renewed focus through his work on and excursions in a damaged sailboat. Haunted by a memory terrible violence, Coleman Moore must come to terms with both the memories of his father and his present-day estrangement from his daughter. A deeply immersive and moving story.

Of Song and Water

This is an amazing novel. The story moves seamlessly across decades with the ease and unpredictability of a jazz guitar solo drawing the reader deeper into the life of the central character. Coulson's mastery of poetry comes through as he carefully creates images for every scene like that of the grandfather skillfully moving his boat across the currents of the Detroit River in the dark. His characters are real and you feel their emotions as they find their way through their past and present. This the work of a craftsman.

Booklist review for "Of Song and Water"

Music and nearly magical evocations of a Midwest landscape shape Coulson's debut, The Vanishing Moon (2004). In his second novel, he portrays a jazz guitarist with grievously injured hands and a complicated relationship with Lake Huron. A third-generation sailor, Coleman, down-and-out and divorced, struggles with his disability (the price of hubris) and tries to be a good father to his wise teenage daughter. Haunted by his rumrunner grandfather and volatile father, he has inherited his father's boat, the Pequod, a clue to Coulson's subtle riffing on Moby-Dick. Patterns of dark and light shift and morph like shadows on water as Coulson choreographs complicated relationships between Coleman, who is white, and black musicians, including his honorable teacher. Coulson's complexly elegiac tale is, in part, a tribute to his mentor, poet and Great Lakes mariner Stephen Tudor. Love abandoned, violence sustained, guilt, grief, the transcendence of sailing and making music, all play in jazzlike counterpoint. Coulson's rhapsodic novel progresses from harsh equations of black and white to an exaltation of color. --Donna Seaman