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In Record Palace, Cindy, a lean,
lonely white girl, has come to Chicago to study art history—to
be anywhere but where she came from—Thousand Oaks, California:
tract housing, mock-stucco buildings, “incessant sun and incessant
sunniness of every blond girl.”
Record Palace, littered with cans of malt liquor and remnants
of past meals, also has boxes upon boxes of records—all jazz.
And it has Acie, “big on all sides, top included. A hairnet,
the hair below the net long and limp with oil. Green stretch
pants, flip-flops, a thin black U-tank taut across Sumo folds.”
Cindy knows she doesn’t belong, and this is why she stays.
Cindy’s determination leads to a tentative friendship with
Acie, and she becomes a familiar, if not fully understood,
presence in the store. But it is through her chance meeting
with Acie’s son that she becomes embroiled in an unusual crime.
With prose that resembles the syncopated rhythms of jazz,
Wheeler—an award-winning poet—offers a stunning portrait of
a woman searching for an identity in a city on the cusp of
social and political change.
Susan Wheeler is the author
of three award-winning books of poetry, Bag ‘o’
Diamonds, Smokes, and Source Codes.
A new collection, Ledger, will be available in April
2005. Record Palace is her first novel. Wheeler lives
in the New York area.
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