Gut Bucket Blues

Gut Bucket Blues is the story of precocious boy who lives in a blues bar and whorehouse called the Butt Hutt in the French Quarter. David's quest for self-identity is compromised when the destructive force of his father, Rembrandt Aaron, blues god and ghost conjurer, captures all the fine details of a picture he has secretly kept in his head and musically transforms his memory into a song. Angry, but petrified by the conjuring trick, David contradictorily finds Rembrandt's blues sermons both strangely appealing and repulsive. But one thing is clear-he cannot give in to the enslaving demands of Rembrandt Aaron. However, by not doing so, he may have participated in his own destruction.
David's odyssey to unravel the meaning that marked his birth takes new shape when a tragic event ushers him from New Orleans to the Louisiana bayou. There, through storytelling, an unforgettable cast of characters teach him lessons about love, salvation, sacrifice, redemption, loss, and dying to help him understand that-there are times when circumstances appear to have an impossible resolution and, that there may not be a graceful closure to his journey of self-discovery.
In an extraordinary debut novel, Anita August draws a remarkable portrait of the musicality of African American oral vernacular traditions and the myths and poetry of New Orleans.