Cannonball Read 18

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Murder in a Made-Up State

Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford

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In Francis Spufford’s imaginative Cahokia Jazz, life in the United States in 1922 is not as we remember it from the history books. The “Cahokia” of the title refers to a state run largely by and for Native Americans, as a partial monarchy informed by Catholic teachings. As a thriving state, Cahokia is attracting more residents from outside the indigenous population, and relations are getting tense. Detective Joe Barrow of the Cahokia P.D. is a man in the middle. A half-Black, half-native orphan from Nebraska, he […]

:A Review

Cahokia Jazz: A Novel by Francis Spufford

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I picked up this book entirely based on the strength of Francis Spufford’s Red Plenty—a novel that’s hard to categorize, summarize, or explain. This is a little easier to place: it’s a 1920s crime noir detective mystery set in an alternate version of the US where the Native American population retained power due to a less virulent strain of smallpox brought by the colonizers. The result is three distinct regions: a version of the US we recognize, a southern area run by the KKK, and Cahokia—a […]

such a delightfully odd book, definitely on my list of books to recommend in turn

Red Plenty by Francis Spufford

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Cannonball Passport: a recommendation from Chris, spasibo How to explain this book, which was exactly what was promised on the back cover and yet hard to fully explain? It is historical fiction, with some characters plucked from the annals of the USSR and others constructed—not from whole cloth, but from several scraps who did exist (or who probably did). It’s a different take on the Soviet Union, painted not with satire but not with nostalgia/wistfulness either? I wonder how much would resonate with someone from […]

So Glad I Didn’t Die Before I Met You

Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford

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As I was finishing this novel, my husband was playing the album I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning by Bright Eyes – and I completely endorse the pairing, if it’s available to you, when you read this book. Which you should, because it was a lovely novel about five lives. It’s not too much of a spoiler to tell you that in the first chapter, everyone dies. The author describes, in painful detail, the impact of a bomb in a Woolworths in Bexford (a fictional London […]



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