Race Music

About the Book

Into the newly-settled (in 1910) Mississippi Delta country comes Sam Schwartz, a Russian immigrant, one of the many wandering Jewish peddlers who comb the backwoods of the American South, a man fleeing an oppressive country and a painful past. He experiences an emotional rebirth with Leafy, a black Delta woman. Race Music (the original term for blues recordings) is the story of Sam and Leafy's relationship, of the family they start and of a love betrayed - a betrayal that has consequences that will span fifty years and reach all the way from the Delta to Chicago's South Side. Delta music - the blues - is always in the background. Celebrated figures like Charlie Patton and Bessie Smith and the fabled Robert Johnson are encountered as they create the Delta's truest history and cultural legacy.

About the Author

Pseudonymous Bosch is the pen name of a Professor of English at a Southern California community college.