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In the last years of the 19th century, the little town of Sedalia, Missouri, was something of a hotbed of ragtime music. Scott Joplin lived and worked there, playing piano in the Maple Leaf Club, and there were many others, living there and passing through, including Otis Saunders, Tom Ireland and Blind Boone. John Stark, not yet a publisher, ran the local music store. When 15-year-old piano whiz Brun Campbell meets Otis Saunders in Oklahoma City and is introduced to the music of Scott Joplin, he is deeply smitten. Within months, he has left his home and ridden the rails to Sedalia to seek out Joplin so he can learn to play ragtime. On the way, however, he stumbles on the body of a young woman. He first tries to revive her, but once he realizes the situation, he recognizes his own danger as a stranger in town and takes off, pocketing a couple of small items she no longer requires. Brun is a smart lad and good-natured, and swiftly finds his feet in his new environment. He gets a job with John Stark, impresses a local saloon keeper with his piano playing, and manages to meet Scott Joplin and persuade him to take on a new pupil. Things seem to be going well, but then a courtly and rather ineffectual gentleman who helped Brun on his first arrival in town is arrested for the murder of the young woman. Brun is sure he didn't do it; he also realizes he has information that would point the investigation in another direction, but that direction would be straight at Scott Joplin. Deeply troubled, he sets out to uncover what he can and feel his way to a solution. This is a very lively book; it is well set in its period, with intriguing characters and a compelling story. The tenor of the times, the buoyant boosterism, the pervasive racism, the veneer of morality, are strongly portrayed. Many of the characters are real people -- the author includes a very useful afterword discussing what in the book is historical fact and what invention. I was interested to learn that Brun Campbell himself was a real person, and amused to discover that there was a cameo appearance by the three-year-old F Scott Fitzgerald, whom I did not recognize, somehow, in the course of the tale. The storytelling is particularly adept. Young Brun's experiences and the life and events in Sedalia are so rich a story in themselves that at first the mystery aspect seems just one small thread among many. Only gradually does it seep into the fabric of the tale, overtaking everybody's preoccupations and shouldering itself to the centre of things in the way that disasters insist on doing. RAGTIME KID is very well done.
Reviewed by Diana Sandberg, June 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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