Such Sweet Thunder

“A colossal work of fiction … Sprawling and searching, it is Dickensian or even Joycean in scope. Carter’s rendering of Amerigo’s journey to adulthood is masterful.”

— The Kansas City Star

“In electric modernist vernacular prose … Carter paints an uncommonly rich picture of black American family life in the early twentieth century.… A marvelous blend of jazz rhythms and high literary tradition.”

— Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

“The story behind
Such Sweet Thunder
is almost as captivating as the extraordinary tale told within its pages.… A rousing, inspired work, keenly observed and soulful … This is a rich addition to our literary understanding of the 20th-century African American experience.”

— The Boston Globe

“Evoking African American childhood uniquely and on a grand scale, Carter’s long-vanished magnum opus finally finds its worthy way into print.… An extraordinarily honest and compassionate child’s-eye view of a world too seldom seen in American fiction.”

— Kirkus Reviews

“Readers will appreciate
Such Sweet Thunder
’s dreamy, nostalgic quality and lyrical writing, which evokes urban life before the war and offers a stirring portrait of a young boy growing up.”

— Booklist
(starred review)

“Infused with the sounds and spirit of Kansas City jazz, the author’s gritty style was ahead of its time.”

— Library Journal

“Echoes of Faulkner, Twain and Joyce … For its lyrical rendering of a time and place long vanished, this is a book to savor, slowly.”

— Entertainment Weekly

“Fans of Toni Morrison or William Kennedy will appreciate Carter’s style, and history buffs will be fascinated by a Kansas City that may have otherwise gone unsung.”

— Midwest Living Magazine

“A spiraling and powerful account of African American life in Kansas City during the 1920s and 1930s. Carter paints a rich, jazz-like portrait of pre–World War II life in Black America.… By fusing the best European modernist literary traditions with African American ones, Carter weaves a colorful, distinctive tapestry of a seminal period in African American history.”

— Seattle Skanner

“Carter bridges Zora Neale Hurston’s folkloric narratives and Toni Morrison’s communal spirituals. In reading Carter’s brilliant narrative of black boyhood and adolescence in the Jazz Age, one is not treated to a dysfunctional ‘ghetto.’ Instead, Carter depicts a mainly black, urban community that is close-knit, organic and striving for uplift.… Few works of fiction are so insistently frank about a boy’s proto-sexual, innocent but instinctive yearnings.… Carter musters profound empathy and warmth for all his characters, especially Amerigo’s parents, Rutherford and Viola, who are self-sacrificing, loyal, contradictory, loving, bawdy and philosophical. Carter’s creations evade stereotype because they seem modeled on people he knew.”

— National Post
(Canada)

“Some critics have speculated that publishers rejected this book because its gentle coming-of-age tale, partially based on Carter’s own life, was at odds with the fiery black-power rhetoric of the ’60s. If that’s true, publishers missed this book’s quiet but unflinching condemnation of a society that rejects bright, eager black children.”

— Cleveland Plain Dealer

“A treasure … 
Such Sweet Thunder
is Carter’s
Portrait of the Artist
.… Amerigo Jones — the name itself speaks of discovery and bold hop — is Carter’s stand-in in the novel.… Dedicated to musical giant Duke Ellington, the book is a jazz mix of sounds and sensations — the phonograph in the living room, the slamming of screen doors up and down his alley, trams clacking down the boulevard, the rhythms and rhymes of his young parents’ enthusiastic speech (‘I was standin’ pat in ma gray bo-back, Jack!’). Amerigo as a child and young man is thirsty for the world, and we drink it all in with him.”

— Rain Taxi

S
uddenly Amerigo had opened his eyes and was staring at the light filtering through the window. Listening to the clock ticking in the middle room. What time is it? Peering into the darkened room where his parents’ bed loomed up in a big bulky shadow.

He closed his eyes once again. The springs of the big bed whined. She isn’t home yet! He was startled by the pop and flash of a match head grating the thumbnail of Rutherford’s right hand. He followed the trace of its yellow flare to the tip of his cigarette. Rutherford’s face shone like a yellow mask in the darkness and disappeared, while the crimson glow at the end of the cigarette grew brighter, and then fainter, in a nervous pulsing rhythm, as he drew the clouds of hot smoke into his lungs and spewed them out into the dark.

The bed lamp flashed on. “Twelve-thirty!” Rutherford muttered angrily.

Where could she
be?
Amerigo wondered.

“Show’s out at the latest,” said Rutherford, “twenty minutes with the streetcar, an’ three-quarters of an hour on foot. But that gal ain’ gonna do no whole lot a walkin’ — not at
this
hour.”

Father and son tossed nervously.

The clock ticked one o’clock, one-one, one-two, one-three,

The crimson tip of Rutherford’s cigarette grew brighter and then fainter.

The cigarette flared like a danger signal, like the stoplight at the top of the alley.

One-four, five, six

A car zoomed down the alley, slowed up at the foot, and turned into the avenue.

One-seven-one-eight …

“Want somethin’ to go with that pint a whiskey, daddy?”

“Hell naw!”

A burst of secret laughter between a man and a woman.

Rutherford ground the top of his cigarette in the ashtray on the table beside the bed and squirmed under the covers.

Silence for three minutes.

He pulled the chain on the bed light, leaped out of bed, and tiptoed barefoot through the front room to the front window and looked out. The son stared at the father’s back silhouetted against the window. The alley was quiet, except for the bugs that buzzed around the hot globe of the streetlight. A man staggered into its bright circle, and urinated against the shed opposite the house, and then staggered into the shadows.

Rutherford went into the kitchen and turned on the faucet and let the water run until it got cold. Then he filled the battered old aluminum cup that Uncle Sexton had brought back from the war and drank until it was empty. Then he went to the toilet. After that he returned to the middle room and sat on the edge of the bed, lit another cigarette, got in bed, and turned off the light.

Night light filtered through the window.

One-thirteen. One-thirty-seven-and-a-half. Thirty-eight.

Rutherford sighed deeply and arranged his pillow. He turned on his side and stared out over the roof of the empty house next door. Whiskey fumes rose from the still on the first floor. A door opened and threw a long oblique beam of light across the roof and the twang of a guitar stirred the night air.

“Black gal!” sang a man with a voice as high as a woman’s: sad, plaintive. “Black gal! Woman what makes yo’ head so hard?”

The door closed. Darkness and silence for two, three, four minutes.

A car turned discreetly into the alley, rolled down past the house, and stopped. The door opened and shut, followed by the click of iron-plated heels on the cobblestones, and then the soft thud of toes tiptoeing up the stair. A momentary silence broken by nervous fingers fumbling for a key, and then the jingle of several keys before one stabbed the lock. The front door swung quietly open, and then a cool rush of night air.

Viola undressed hurriedly, quietly. Rutherford lay dangerously still. The clock ticked unbearably loud.

Rutherford stirred as though her movements had awakened him. He turned on the lamp and the room flushed rose. Viola, caught in her underskirt, was hastily slipping off her stockings. The naked glow of the bulb shone directly upon his angry face. It drew deep hard shadows under his eyes.

“Do you know what time it is?” He picked up the clock and looked at it. “Well?” He rose threateningly upon one elbow.

Why don’ she
say somethin’?
he implored.

“
Yes
. I-know-what-time-it-is.”

“This crap’s gotta stop! This is the second time this week. You’re a married woman! Out gallyvantin’ till-till almost two o’clock in the mornin’. What you take me for, a damned fool? Sick an’ tired a this shit! Workin’ like a damned dog — an’ for what?”

“What you startin’ all that rigamarole for?” Viola retorted. “I went to the show. An’ then I met Susie an’ Mabel on Eighteenth Street. She was with Bill. An’ they asked me to have a drink with ’um at Elk’s Rest an’ I went with ’um. We got to talkin’, an’ it got late. That’s all!”

“ ’Em lies gonna trip you up one a these days an’ I’m gonna break your damned neck!”

“If I was big,” the child muttered to himself, “if I was big I’d
kill ’im
— talkin’ to
her
like that. To
my momma!
”

Tears rolled down his face. He stirred angrily in his bed in protest.

“Go to sleep, boy!” Rutherford commanded.

Viola got into bed, and the lights went out.