Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes is a snappy, intoxicating confluence of music, dance and mysticism; of civil rights, politics and revolution; of activism, commitment and service; of love, compassion and redemption...a polyphonic prose fusion of syncopation and harmonics blended with a spirited ensemble of characters giving voice to the full range of human emotions.
The story traces a "cosmos in motion"... "moving relentlessly in an arc of justice," wearing Chango's beads of power and protection and a pair of two-tone shoes, dancing and undulating to the pulsating rhythms of the constant background music... to the blue notes of jazz.
The story belongs to journalist Daniel Quinn and begins in August 1936, during his childhood in Albany, New York, when one night while out and about the town with his father George, the young eight year-old meets the great crooner Bing Crosby and experiences an unforgettable night of jazz piano and song that will reverberate in his soul for the rest of his life. The tempo is thus set and puts into motion a life's odyssey for Daniel. Inspired by his iconic journalist grandfather, the senior Daniel Quinn, young Quinn embarks on an adventurous career of news journalism and fiction writing.
The story then jumps in time to March, 1957 and the El Floridita bar in Havana, Cuba, where Quinn is delivered into the realm of Papa Hemingway, the great legendary writer in whose literary footsteps Quinn hopes to follow. At the same time as meeting Hemingway, Quinn also falls into the orbit of an enchanting woman destined to become his wife, the beautiful, fiery Renata, around whom the rest of Quinn's life will perpetually revolve.
Quinn is about to leave his own footprints in the world of heroic journalism, much like his grandfather did, in Cuba. He meets revolutionaries, gun-runners, corrupt government officials and Cuba's rising revolutionary hero, Fidel Castro. He gets initiated into the mystical spirit world of the island's Santeria religion and receives his own powerful talisman - the Chango beads acquired in his marriage to his beloved, gun-running Renata, while on pilgrimage with the rebels in the jungles and mountains of Cuba to interview Fidel Castro.
The story then jumps ahead in rumbling measure from Cuba to New York, with a down-beat falling heavily on June 5, 1968, the tragic day Bobby Kennedy was shot. Quinn the reporter is once again on the familiar turf of Albany, a city on the verge of imploding with race riots and civil unrest, radicalism and political corruption, guns and violence, drugs and alcoholism, urban blight and crime, homelessness and poverty.
The narrative is rounded out with an ensemble of senile old-timers, aging musicians, young radicals, angry civil rights activists, radical Catholic priests, alcoholics, prostitutes, the homeless and displaced, drug runners, crooked politicians, underworld business connections, colorful friends, devoted family members. The characters dance in and around time and place, always in motion, always revolving. Quinn's orbit around his Renata too is a perpetual revolution, a ritual dance to a music in which they keep time together ..." in life, love, and death moving to a three-quarter beat."
The 83 year old William Kennedy is the master composer and conductor of this uniquely lyrical masterpiece. He was born and raised in Albany, New York and before becoming a novelist, he was a long-time journalist reporting on both the Cuban revolutions and the civil rights movements of the 50s and 60s. In
Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes he never misses a beat and has complete control of the pacing. The plotting sings, arranged like music, with story lines brought together like improvisational jazz. His narrative never lags. It is smart and imperturbable, witty and wise, perspicacious and piquant. Never does a doubt arise concerning authenticity or believablity. He says in his Acknowledgements, "This novel is full of true stories of both revolutions it addresses, and of the people in them. I have changed dates and names, and telescoped time and events to control the story; any real people have been reimagined."
Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes is revolutionary reading. For me it was like reading the music of jazz... a jazz fusion of literary style and soulful storytelling; a cool narrative arc mixing rhythms and harmonies with a syncopated timbre that resonates in every nerve of the reader. It is a story with such gusto, with such spirit and vibrancy... it will long be reverberating with this reader.
