Cross Dog Blues - Richard M. Brock

This is another impulse buy kinda thing - not sure where I heard of it but it sounded somewhat interesting and I found it cheap, so thought I'd give it a try.

This is a fictional story that bounces back'n'forth from the past - where Brock intertwines the lives of multiple famous bluesmen - and the present - or, at least, 2002. The original bluesmen - Charlie Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Leadbelly, Son House and others - form a group dedicated to Charlie's style of blues that he feels can change the world for the Black community. In the present, a youngster is looking in the Delta for his blues-playing father who ran out on him and he hooks up with a homeless, old bluesman with a story to tell.

Both in the past and in the present, the characters deal with prejudices and violence, and the past is obviously fictionalized (although Brock does intertwine true facts from the men's lives) and the present is practically a caricature of Southern racial relations. Humorously, almost every main character is sucker-punched, both in the past and present, sometimes more than once, to the point where I wonder if Brock is trying to make a vague analogy or if he just enjoys slapstick.

According to the subtitle, this is "book one of a great long story to tell" and while the volume does leave things open-ended, it's not like Brock leaves a cliff-hanger, which is nice. This is entertaining and fun, although I'm not sure if I will search out the next volume when it appears.