Wild Women and the Blues: A Fascinating and Innovative Novel of Historical Fiction

I was so excited to read this book and almost chose for my book club… I’m so glad I didn’t. It was, at times, painful to read. The main character, Honoree, starts out as this strong female and then you find out she’s a bit mean, annoyingly starstruck, and foolish! Also the ending was stupid. It was rushed and didn’t make sense.

***CONTAINS SPOILERS*** This story begins with Sawyer Hayes visiting centenarian Honoree Dalcour on a chicago nursing home. She was a 1920s Chicago cabaret dancer who is now in a nursing home being paid for by Sawyer's grandmother. Sawyer plans to interview her to complete his film thesis. 1920s Honoree finds love in Ezekiel Bailey in her early teens but he and his family suddenly move away. Three years later he returns to Chicago but not as the man she remembers and with no intentions on explaining his sudden disappearance. His reappearance also coincides with the troubles that Honoree encounters and aids in her having to forget her dreams of being as famous as Josephine Baker. I found the majority of this book entertaining. In the beginning Sawyer is extremely annoying. His story arc was rather boring honestly. There is an attempt at character depth with him in how he deals with his sister's death but isn't explored nearly enough for it to have any meaning to the story. It honestly could've been left out and wouldn't have taken away from the story at all. He honestly could've been a random reporter if it hadn't been for the plot twist of his relation to Honeree. In the beginning Honoree eludes to a scandal that occured in Chicago that she was apart of. She witnesses a murder and from that point on her life is flipped. We learn, kinda, that he is murdered for not having some number slips that Honoree was supposed to give him but we never learn the significance of the slips. Why did a man have to die over them and after his death no one seemed to care about them anymore. Outside of the murderer being one of Al Capone's cronies, that part was very under explained seeing as it was supposed to be some huge scandal. I give this book a 3.5 simply because it was entertaining and I love the 1920s era. I feel that if the under developed parts I mentioned above were completely left out, the rest of the book would've still made for entertaining reading.