Buck

It's New Orleans in the early 1990s at the onset of the Grunge movement, a palpably different place from the post-Katrina city of today. James Buck is a young, self-taught musician, in exile from his devastatingly unsupportive parents, with an impossible dream to be a classical violinist. What he lacks in pedigree, though, he makes up for with a raw talent and an uncompromising determination. Saving his meager pay working at a poultry plant in rural Missouri, he dreams big and colorful about his upcoming life in the Big Easy. However, reality is well fashioned to break his heart. Opportunities are scarce, racism runs amuck, the culture is changing and it may not be to his benefit. The people he meets are vague shapes in a haze of drugs and sex and dysfunctional relationships, murmuring in a storm of impenetrable music, and the best last thing to rebel against is being normal. But James Buck has reason to believe he can succeed, even if inadequately prepared, and he holds to his dream, entirely convinced it's better do something great, briefly, than to do nothing in particular, indefinitely.

Buck is a beautifully written novel about an uncompromising young musician at the end of the twentieth century, and the only thing it lacks is an accompanying soundtrack.