Book Review: Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan

Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
Length: 343 Pages
Genres: Historical Fiction
Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars

"Folks think a lifetime is a thing stretched out over years. It ain't. It can happen quick as a match in a dark room."

Trigger Warnings in this book for Racism and Statutory Rape

Simply put, this book made me want to quit writing. I was sitting there, lapping up every description, every simile, every word that Esi Edugyan put on the page, just in total awe over how someone can create a group of people, a story, that is so real. Fortunately (or unfortunately), I will not quit writing, despite knowing that this, at least to me, is it!

I think one of the most interesting things in the world is how one moment, one choice, can change the rest of someone's life irrevocably, and Half-Blood Blues is a excellent exploration of that. This is a tale told by a wonderfully unreliable narrator, Sidney "Sid" Griffiths, who in 1939 to 1940, jumped around from Berlin to Paris as a member of the Jazz band the Hot-Time Swingers. Among the players is his oldest friend and troublemaker, Chip Jones, and Hieronymus "Hiero" Falk, the youngest member who also happens to be a "Mischling" or "Rhineland Bastard": a child of a German mother and a father who was an African soldier. Hiero is only twenty but is already a musical genius on the trumpet, and the boys are overjoyed when they hear that Louis Armstrong is interested in them (especially Hiero) via the beautiful singer, Delilah Brown. Sid's love for Delilah, and overwhelming jealousy towards her relationship with Hiero, is the first step to sewing deep seeds of betrayal among them, all coming to a shocking end. An end that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

In 1992 Sid, in his eighties now, is living a boring life back in Baltimore. He gave up music, has been married thrice, and is loathe to dwell on the past. Unfortunately for him, the past comes roaring back to life when Chip shows up, claiming to have received a letter from the long assumed dead Hiero. Now he has to make amends with his past, whether he wants to or not.

Although I'm a huge fan of WWII stories, I have to agree with the majority of Historical Fiction readers when they say they're getting tired of them. It seems as if every story has been told again and again and again. But that's not the case with this book. Half-Blood Blues finally tells a story that seems to almost be forgotten, that of the "Rhineland Bastards", of the people of color swept up in the brutality of war who were just trying to flee the clutches of Jim Crow. It's utterly moving, refreshing, and, in my honest opinion, should have won the Booker Prize.