British author Francis Spufford (Red Plenty; Golden Hill) brilliantly transforms the American landscape with immersive storytelling in Cahokia Jazz, an alternate history spotlighting an Indigenous Midwest metropolis in 1922 fighting for its continued existence.
Indigenous Cahokia policeman Joe Barrow and his white partner, Phineas Drummond, are summoned to investigate a mutilated corpse--a white man--dramatically perched atop the pyramid skylight of the city's Land Trust building. While Barrow is drawn to the "real... elaborate" details of the gruesome murder, Drummond--Barrow's senior on the job by six months--recommends a more direct approach: "Better see who it is. The why's usually in the who." The media is ready to call it "a human sacrifice--in a city founded by Aztec royalty--and still ruled by Aztec royalty," but Barrow knows easy assumptions will only mask the truth. He has a week to catch the killer to keep the fragmented community's fragile peace, requiring a fine balance: delicate negotiations with the royalty, capitalist bosses, jazz sessions, and both kinds of clans--the familial and those hooded in white.
Spufford, who began his lauded career writing nonfiction, expertly infuses that talent into his imaginative world: Cahokia as ancient history and physical geography is real. Spufford's remarkable version here could exist, which he clarifies in his thoroughly convincing author's note. He assuredly populates this mesmerizing might-have-been setting with a notable cast, diverse in ethnicities, backgrounds, and beliefs. The occasional real person--cultural anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, for example--underscores Cahokia's aspirational reality. To read is to believe--and marvel. --Terry Hong