🎩 Lyrics of a Blackbird 🎩
Old loves, festering hatreds, and buried family secrets: A man returns from the dead in this sweeping tale of Jazz Age New York.
Civil rights attorney David McKay disappeared years ago while investigating a lynching down South. Now, he's back, very much alive and very determined to unearth the truth about his sister’s brutal death. His search rips back the curtain on the glittering world of the Harlem Renaissance to reveal a world of lies, hypocrisy, and tragic betrayal. Each day he spends in town brings him closer to the truth—and closer to ruin. How soon before time runs out? How soon before his enemies find out what he's been doing all these years? Before they uncover his own bitter and shameful secret—the sin that could destroy him?
"...a compelling family intrigue and a full, vibrant portrait of that storied era when Harlem's pulse was the rhythm of black America."
— The Boston Globe
"Walker slyly taunts and teases readers with her shrewdly rendered characters..."
— Publishers Weekly
"This intriguing page-turner, convincingly set in the heady era of 1920s Harlem, is atmospheric and smart and will keep readers guessing until the very end."
— TANANARIVE DUE, author of The Living Blood and The Black Rose
Twenty-five years on, the shadows in this story still move. Strivers’ Row still polishes its pride. Harlem still hums with secrets. David McKay came home looking for answers about his sister’s death, and found truths that cut deeper than he’d ever feared.
To mark the anniversary, here’s a crossword drawn from the world of Lyrics of a Blackbird — its class tensions, its silences, its tragedies, its danger. Nothing spoiled, everything implied.
Step back into 1926. See what rises when you start digging.
