Introducing SUGARLAND by Martha Conway

Sugarland

By Martha Conway

North American Book Award Winning Novelist Goes “Noir”

A RIVETING TALE OF MUSIC, MYSTERY, AND MURDER IN CHICAGO’S PROHIBITION-ERA ‘BLACK AND TAN’ CLUBS

The Jazz Age has long held court in the pop culture lexicon as one of the most exuberant eras America has seen. The smoky speakeasies. The ladies in flapper dresses. The gangsters in low-slung fedoras. Music that changed the world.

But much has been forgotten in the great swamp of history – including the fact that in the early days of jazz, it wasn’t just a boy’s club of late night jam sessions and hard drinking. The real taboo breakers were the women who had successful and innovative careers alongside the men.

The hotly anticipated new novel from North American Book Award winning author Martha Conway, Sugarland [Noontime Books, May 12 2016] breathes new life into the Roaring Twenties, and invites readers into a rendering of the Chicago jazz circuit that’s as seductive as it is dangerous.

Centered on Eve Riser – a young African-American musician who unwittingly puts herself in peril when she witnesses the accidental killing of a white sugar farmer by a black man – Sugarland follows Eve as she tries to help cover up the crime, and agrees to deliver money and a letter to a man named Rudy Hardy in Chicago.

But when Eve arrives in Chicago, she learns that her stepsister Chickie, a nightclub singer, is pregnant by the white club owner. That night, Eve witnesses another murder – that of Rudy Hardy, in a drive-by shooting – and Chickie disappears.

Alongside Rudy Hardy’s sister, Lena – a lonely nurse who is drawn to the music clubs – Eve sets out to find Chickie, while Lena works to find out who killed her brother and why. Together, Lena and Eve form an unlikely bond as they navigate the back alleys and smoky rooms of Prohibition-era nightlife – and ultimately uncover a bootlegging operation with deadly potential.

Smartly paced, full of dark humor, and informed by Conway’s close research of first-hand accounts, memoirs, and interviews of early jazz musicians and singers, Sugarland deftly explores racial tension in America, the realities of life as a female musician in the early days of jazz, and the transcendent power of music, above all else, to express what can’t otherwise be understood.

“I read a biography of the late Mary Lou Williams, a jazz pianist and composer, and was fascinated by her story,” Conway says of her inspiration to pen Sugarland. “In the early days of jazz, female musicians were much more prevalent than most people know. And racial integration in Chicago had its roots in, among other places, the clubs where they performed.”

Martha Conway has select availability for feature/profile interviews around the May 2016 release of Sugarland and can discuss:

· Writing in the voice of a female African-American musician in 1921 as a twenty-first century white author

· The most fascinating and unusual findings from the research she engaged in to give Sugarlandhistorical accuracy

· Early female jazz musicians: who they were and why we should remember their names and contributions

· Jazz Age culture, and how it differed from what we see in the movies

· Why it’s important that we put women in the lead within narratives that typically see men in the starring roles

About the Author:

Martha Conway’s first novel was nominated for an Edgar Award, and her second novel, Thieving Forest, won the 2014 North American Book Award for Best Historical Fiction. Her short fiction has been published in The Iowa Review, The Carolina Quarterly Review, The Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Folio, and other journals. She teaches creative writing for Stanford University’s Continuing Studies Program and UC Berkeley Extension, and is a recipient of a California Arts Council Fellowship for Creative Writing. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, she is one of seven sisters. She currently lives in San Francisco.

Sugarland is available via Amazon and in select brick-and-mortar retailers.

Martha is on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/martha.conway.52),

Twitter (,https://twitter.com/marthamconway),

Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/23092.Martha_Conway)

and of course her website: www.marthaconway.com