Rosalyn Story

A sweeping love story about how long-buried family secrets devastate the marriage of a brilliant musician and his swife. Homeless L.J. Tillman is a jazz saxophonist whose life has been torn apart. When the painful secret that L.J. had kept all his life had finally been revealed, it shattered his marriage to Olivia, a promising singer who works as a beautician. More Than You Know is the elegantly crafted story of how this troubled couple rescues their marriage: shaken to the core, they discover that truth conforms to its own rules, and that love can endure even the most profound injuries. Rosalyn Story, herself a successful musician, has created a lyrical, emotionally consuming page-turner that delves deeply into the mysteries of love, family, and marriage.

More Than You Know

"This third novel by Rosalyn Story, whose critically acclaimed books treat the central role of Black people in American music, is her most rewarding yet, telling the intertwined stories of two singers whose lives connect across time"--

A Novel

Sing Her Name

The Essence-bestselling author of More Than You Know “has crafted a post-Katrina New Orleans from a fumy cloud of sad jazz and Creole spices” (Publishers Weekly). When Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans, chef and widower Simon Fortier knows how he plans to face the storm—riding it out inside his long-time home in the city’s Treme neighborhood, just as he has through so many storms before. But when the levees break and the city is torn apart, Simon disappears. His son, Julian, a celebrated jazz trumpeter, rushes home to a New Orleans he left years before to search for his father. As Julian crisscrosses the city, fearing the worst, he reconnects with Sylvia, Simon’s companion of many years; Parmenter, his father’s erstwhile business partner and one of the most successful restaurateurs in New Orleans; and Velmyra, the woman Julian left behind when he moved to New York. Julian’s search for Simon deepens as he finds himself drawn into the troubled history of Silver Creek, the extravagantly beautiful piece of land where his father grew up, and closer once again to Velmyra. As he tries to come to grips with his father’s likely fate, Julian slowly gains a deeper, richer understanding of his father and the city he loved so much, while unraveling the mysteries of Silver Creek. “Story’s musical background infuses her novel with a lyrical rhythm . . . as engaging characters rebuild their relationships and their city . . . moving, if heart-wrenching.” —Kirkus Reviews

A Novel of New Orleans

Wading Home

Sing Her Name follows two musically gifted women whose lives overlap across the boundaries of time. This third novel by Rosalyn Story, whose critically acclaimed books treat the central role of Black people in American music, is her best and most rewarding yet. Beautiful and brilliantly talented Celia DeMille is a nineteenth-century concert artist who has garnered fame, sung all over the world, and amassed a fortune. But prejudice bars her from achieving her place in history as one of the world’s greatest singers, and she dies in poverty and obscurity. In 21st-century New Orleans, Eden Malveaux, a thirty-something waitress with a beautiful but untutored voice, is the sole guardian of her 17-year-old brother. Motherless for most of their lives, she has struggled for years to make ends meet as she fights to keep the promise she made to their dying father: to protect her wayward brother and raise him as if he were her own child. After a hurricane displaces them to New York City, Eden seeks safe refuge—not only from the ensuing flood, but also to hide her brother from the law, while she works to divert him from a path of crime, prison, or worse. Months into their New York stay, Eden’s estranged Great Aunt Julia summons her back to New Orleans for a brief visit, and the older woman gives Eden something that alters the course of her life: a box she found in the midst of flooded rubble containing a hundred-year-old scrapbook and a mysterious and valuable gold pendant necklace belonging to one of the greatest singers in history—Celia DeMille. Eden returns to New York, but as she explores the artifacts of Celia DeMille’s extraordinary life, curiosity grows into obsession, then into an inspiration that propels Eden into a world she never dreamed. With the help of new friends, and buoyed by the diva’s story, Eden’s new life in New York takes a dramatic turn toward unimagined success. But just as she is poised to make her mark on the world stage, her brother’s dangerous choices catch up with them, and Eden must confront buried secrets from her complicated childhood. To face the promise of her future, Eden must first reconcile years of regrets and leave behind the guilt of the past—and perhaps even the brother she loves.

Rosalyn Story

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