Blues Dancing: A Novel

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

Overview

My aunt says if you smell butter on a foggy night you're getting ready to fall in love.

For the last twenty years, the beautiful Verdi Mae has led a comfortable life with Rowe, the conservative professor who rescued her from addiction when she was an undergrad. But her world is about to shift when the smell of butter lingers in the air and Johnson -- the boy from the back streets of Philadelphia who pulled her into the fire of passion and all the shadows cast from it -- returns to town.

In "this story of self-discovery that moves seamlessly between the early 1970s and early 1990s" (Publishers Weekly starred review), acclaimed writer Diane McKinney-Whetstone takes readers into a world of erotic love, drugs, and political activism, and beautifully illustrates the struggle to reconcile passion with accountability and the redemptive powers of love's rediscovery.

This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061876707
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	10/13/2009
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	114,472
File size:	393 KB

About the Author

The author of the critically acclaimed novels Tumbling, Tempest Rising, Blues Dancing, Leaving Cecil Street, and Trading Dreams at Midnight, Diane McKinney-Whetstone is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s Literary Award for Fiction, which she won twice. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband. For more on Diane McKinney-Whetstone please visit www.mckinney-whetstone.com or follow her on Twitter @Dianemckwh.

Read an Excerpt

Blues Dancing
A Novel

Chapter One

This night air was filled with low-hanging clouds. The kind that softened everything they covered with a smoky blue haze that felt like a dream. Like this neighborhood way west of the river that had declined over the years from a place of majestic three-storied rows to intermittent blocks of good and bad and devastated; like the too-young boys in too-loose clothes hanging on these corners doing deals that would make the devil beam; even memories of a time when a girl becoming a woman had thrown away her promise as if it were a tattered rag, and descended into a drain lined with syringes, bent spoons, and long-sleeved shirts dotted with her innocent, middle-class southern blood. It all took on a floaty, shimmering effect inside these clouds and became appealing in a way that was both sultry and safe. Especially through the back window of this yellow cab. Especially to Verdi as she gave in to the softening powers of the fog.

She nestled against the cracked leatherette seat as the air swayed in and out through the window. Two-faced March air, chilly yet impatient for spring, so it had a filmy warmth to it, she picked it apart for the warmth rather than close the window, siphoned through the myriad aromas trapped and kept close by the low-slung clouds as the cab rolled past the gone-to-bed homes and businesses of West Philly: someone had liver and onions for dinner here, turnips there; she could smell chicken grease from the take-out wings place on Fifty-second Street; curry from the Indian restaurant as they got closer to the University City section where Verdi lived with her life mate, Rowe; nutmeg, thyme, from the House of Spices. And there it was. Butter. No mistaking it, the smooth milky aroma concentrated under this fog. It went straight to her head, swooned her because her aunt Posie was superstitious about things like that, said that a whiff of collards on a Wednesday means you're getting ready to get paid, or the scent of lemons when it's snowing means somebody close is pregnant, the hint of fish frying on a Thursday means you're having overnight guests for the weekend, and the smell of butter on a foggy night means you're getting ready to fall in love.

"You smell that?" she said excitedly to the back of the cabdriver's head.

"I don't smell nothzing, my cab clean, lady."

She yelled at him to stop then and she rarely yelled at people like cabdrivers, elevator operators, the ones who vacuumed the carpet at the special-needs school where she was principal. Figured she'd be working thus if Rowe's large hands hadn't rushed in and broken her fall when she'd tumbled from her heightened station in life. Told the cabdriver to stop right now, let her out, she needed to get out.

"You sure, lady? Here? That lady who tip me said I wait till you in your door."

"She worry too much, I'll be fine," Verdi said, talking about Kitt, her close first cousin, her aunt Posie's daughter with whom she'd spent the evening, who'd walked outside with Verdi and stuck her head in the cab as it was about to pull off.

"You call me if that arrogant pompous professor you shacked up with gives you any shit about staying out so late," Kitt had said.

She'd waved Kitt away like she was trying to do to the cabdriver now. But he just sat there reluctant to leave her out here like this. She didn't know what it was about herself that made people want to watch over her, thought maybe it was her eyes with their downward slant, or how she wore her hair relaxed bone straight and cut close the way Rowe liked it, or her thinness, he liked her thin too though she preferred herself when she'd had a curve to her hips.

She leaned into the cab window, whispered into the driver's face, "My aunt says if you smell butter on a foggy night you're getting ready to fall in love." She made her eyes go big, lowered her voice even more the way her aunt would do. "And if you're walking alone when you smell it-"

"Yeah? Yeah? What happen?"

Verdi didn't know the rest, when her aunt got to this part her face would glaze over in an oily sheen, she'd start fanning herself and shaking her head. Lord have mercy is all her aunt could say after that. "It's just better that's all," she said to the cabdriver as she turned and started walking toward home.

She took measured steps though she knew she should be rushing if she were going to stick to the story she'd fed Rowe earlier. She hated that she'd lied, such a harmless thing too, spending the evening at Kitt's house. But Rowe despised her cousin so. Went on and on about her lack of degrees and couth whenever Verdi let on about her Visits there. So rather than hear him rant about her first cousin with whom she felt closer than a sister, Verdi told him that she was going in town to get her nails done, to get chocolate-covered-coconut eggs for the baskets she was doing for the younger ones at her school. Not Godiva but better than the Acme brand; ran around after work then to at least get the eggs, then begged Kitt for a manicure after they'd pushed back from another one of Kitt's culinary masterpieces.

This air was too creamy to rush through anyhow as it settled on her forehead now, stroked her, slowed her steps even more. She needed to walk, not for the sensation of the buttery aroma swimming around in her head, nor for falling in love, she'd been in love once, loved Rowe most of the time now. Right now she walked because, because why? she asked herself. Because. She just wasn't ready to go home yet.

Blues Dancing
A Novel. Copyright © by Diane McKinney-Whetstone. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

What People are Saying About This

Terry Kay

Diane McKinney-Whetstone's Blues Dancing is the kind of book that other writers envy, because it so splendidly captures the passionate, dilemma-scarred goings-on between people. Readers will find it compelling and memorable—a joyful experience with words.

Reading Group Guide

Introduction

For the last 20 years, slim, dazzling, beautiful Verdi Mae has composed a quiet life for herself with her former professor, Rowe. He makes her feel so good, even as he stifles her with his care until, walking home from her cousin Kitt's home, Verdi smells butter in the foggy evening air -- it is the fragrance of the future beckoning; the scent of falling in love; and the harbinger of change. Verdi's first love has returned to town: Johnson, the boy from the back streets of Philadelphia who captured Verdi's heart in college. Their relationship was unalloyed sweetness until Johnson taught Verdi to love heroin.

With Johnson's reappearance, questions about the choices Verdi has made and the person she's become rise inexorably to the surface. As the ground beneath her shifts, Verdi must discover the one person who can save her -- herself. In vivid, incandescent prose, Diane McKinney-Whetstone offers an unforgettable tour de force about love, betrayal, and faith.

Questions for Discussion

1. Johnson and Verdi "watched their Blues Dancing like they wished that they could." Why do you think McKinney-Whetstone chose this as the title for her book?


2. "Even though Rowe fell in love with the restored version of her, he'd never really let go of the impending-doom anxiety that Verdi might leave him." Although Rowe is purportedly the protector, he lives in constant fear. What is he afraid of losing? Why does he feel such animosity toward Kitt?


3. Posie apologies to Johnson for overburdening him with expectation. To what extent is her expectation tied to race and class?


4. Throughout her life, Verdi seeks a balance between security and freedom. How do Rowe, Johnson, Kitt, Posie, Hortense, Leroy, and Sage navigate between these two extremes? To whom do they look for guidance? What are obstacles in their paths?


5. Kitt lives in doubt of Leroy's love for her mother. Posie never suspects that her niece is a junkie. It takes Verdi over 20 years to suspect that Johnson told Rowe where to find Verdi the night Johnson left. What is it that keeps them from seeing the truth?


6. Blues Dancing is alive with scent, sound, sight, taste, touch. Choose an example you find particularly evocative and discuss why.


7. How do you think Verdi, Rowe, and Johnson changed over 20 years? How do you imagine each of them will continue to change?


8. Leroy tells Verdi of two roads, "a slick superhighway, sure to get the man to his destination with unparalleled swiftness" and a road on which "the destination is not assured, but what a journey." For Leroy, where was this destination? For Verdi? Do you agree with Verdi that sometimes the "highway" is the better path?


9. Posie plunges into romance after romance, but her daughter is more careful, more restrained. What is it that finally liberates Kitt, enabling her to take a risk, to open herself to loving Bruce, and to see what happens? What was she waiting for?


10. Because Sage cannot speak, she experiences the world in colors. How do these colors infuse the prose? How does Sage's silence function in the novel? What is holding her back? What are the other incarnations of voicelessness in this story?


11. Discuss McKinney-Whetstone's use of food and eating throughout the novel. How are they similarly used in Tempest Rising?


12. Near the end of the novel, Verdi tells Johnson, "'No more giving up power that's not even mine to give up, nor yours to take.'" Whose power is it? What is the nature of that power? How do you think Verdi has come to this realization?

About the Author

Diane McKinney-Whetstone is the author of the national bestseller Tumbling. A native of Philadelphia, she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, where she now teaches fiction writing. She is a regular contributor to Philadelphia magazine, and her work has appeared in Essence and the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine. She has received numerous awards, including a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant, the Zora Neale Hurston Society Award, a Citation from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and Author of the Year Award from the national Go On Girl Book Club. She lives with her husband, Greg, and teenage twins outside Philadelphia.

Editorial Reviews

Diane McKinney-Whetsone uses her gift for language to weave a love story that spans more than 20 years and three lives. Blues is a novel well worth curling up with on a long winter's night.
— Essence

Martha Southgate

Delving again into the Philadelphia she claimed in her first two novels (Tumbling; Tempest Rising), McKinney-Whetstone gives a rhapsodic performance in this story of self-discovery that moves seamlessly between the early 1970s and early '90s. At its heart is Verdi, a woman fast approaching 40, who lives with Rowe, the older professor who saved her from a drug habit when she was an undergrad. Now the recently appointed principal at a school for special-needs children, Verdi is enjoying a relatively stable life when she learns that her first love--charismatic and street-smart Johnson, the college flame who introduced Verdi to political activism and heroin--is back in town. Running into Johnson unexpectedly at a cousin's birthday party, Verdi finds her feelings for him far from dead as they face each other and seem to sense "their blues dancing." But Verdi's attraction to Johnson, who's now an established fund-raiser, raises questions about her long-kicked habit and about her relationship with Rowe. Gracefully dovetailing with the love triangle are the equally complex and eloquent stories of Verdi's mother, aunt and, especially, her close-as-a-sister cousin Kitt. Pitch-perfect dialogue and a keen eye capture the spirit and cadences of the early '70s, when students were "booking" between Black Students League events and listening to the Stylistics on the record player. The author pegs the caring but comfy zeitgeist of the '90s as well. Verdi's evolution, from sheltered but curious daughter of a Southern preacher to drug-addicted student to stifled partner of an overprotective father figure, is all too credible. Flashbacks to the early days of the erstwhile lovers' relationship shimmer with the intoxication of first love, while their later encounters powerfully reveal their vulnerability to old desires. The novel's swift resolution may seem improbable, but even the tidiest wrap-up can't help but satisfy readers who have become passionately involved in the fates of these winning characters. Agent, Pam Bernstein. 11-city author tour. (Nov.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A love story spanning 20 years, this novel, like the author's earlier ones (Tumbling and Tempest Rising), is set in Philadelphia. Despite a trite-sounding plot--star-crossed lovers--LJ's reviewer said the book had "real depth and emotion." (LJ 10/1/99) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

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