Hometown Heroes

In the years after Hurricane Katrina, the lives of New Orleans guitarists Joe Applebalm and Jerry Elsworth follow wildly divergent paths. They both end up in New York, but while the success of Jerry's memoir 'Hometown Heroes'-and the subsequent TV show based on the book-brings him fame, fortune, and a life of luxury, Joe, wondering bitterly where he went wrong, languishes in day-job oblivion. Over a drunken night back in New Orleans the two are brought together, and strange forces attempt to influence their fates... But who are Joe and Jerry? How did things turn out so differently for two musicians from the same place and background? Who decides who makes it and who doesn't? Could there be darker forces at work? Hometown Heroes delves into these questions with a mixture of humor, satire, and pathos. The novel is a meditation on fame, love, music, and the vicissitudes of life as a struggling jazz musician in New York City. It's a fast-paced page turner which also expresses nostalgia for the simpler past. Lyrical passages concerning love and loss alternate with dark, brooding stretches full of frustration and bitterness. The novel puts the reader inside the head of a struggling jazz musician in a way that few other works have. After reading Hometown Heroes you will know what it feels like to improvise through 'Let's Get Lost'; you will discover what a jazz musician hears when he listens to a quartet playing in a dingy basement bar; you'll be privy to the dark ruminations that lead great musicians to drink and destruction. Hometown Heroes is a unique work, written by a jazz musician, and dedicated to all those cats sweating it out down in the trenches, trying to make ends meet.