Broke Heart Blues

In the heat of a languid July, fresh from Las Vegas, John Reddy Heart drives into the quiet upstate town of Willowsville, New York. Eleven years old, piloting a traffic-stopping, salmon-colored Cadillac, he arrives with his stunning mother beside him, his grandfather and younger siblings in the backseat. His mother is Dahlia Heart, a blackjack dealer of dubious reputation who always dresses in white. She has come to Willowsville to claim the rambling mansion left to her by one of her wealthy suitors. But it is John Reddy - already growing into a heartbreaking hybrid of James Dean, Brando, and Elvis - who will claim the town itself. It is John Reddy who will arouse the desire of Willowsville's teenage girls and the worship of its boys; the fear and envy of its men, and the yearning of its women. And it is John Reddy who will capture the town's soul forever on the night a prominent citizen is shot dead in Dahlia Heart's bedroom - and a statewide manhunt sweeps Willowsville's rebel outlaw into the realm of a living myth. Over the course of thirty years, from the sixties through the nineties, Broke Heart Blues charts the rise and fall - and ultimate call to reckoning - of John Reddy Heart, through the myriad voices of those who find in him their whipping boy, savior, dream lover, and confessor. At once a scathing indictment of the cult-like nature of fame and celebrity in America, and a meditation on human need and longing, it is a powerful and provocative achievement.