Bone Music

by Alan Rodgers

A little over sixty years ago, Robert Johnson died of poison in a little town up off the bluff in Arkansas. In an hour, a little girl named Lisa will die of cancer. Such different deaths — but linked, horribly and inevitably, by the crime Robert Johnson committed in the hour that he died. That Crime was Judgment Robert Johnson sang Judgment Day, the song to end the world, as he lay dying in that shack up off the Mississippi River bluff — and nothing anywhere in the world has been right since. Because the Kings of Hoodoo died to save the world from Robert Johnson’s folly, and when they died the secret order that underlay our lives died with them. Those Kings ruled the hearts and minds of everyone along the Mississippi lowlands — all the way north to Chicago. They didn’t rule so you could see, but they ruled all the same, guiding each of us from deep inside. (You and I know these Hoodoo wizards as great Blues singers, dead and buried. But they were not dead — only hidden from the world.) Without the Wizard Kings to guide us, the land and all the world have gone astray — and the day’s at hand when even this new decrepit order will leak away, to leave us in a world of chaos and destruction. There was a notion, long ago, that the Great American Novel would be a book that defined us as a people — a Nibelungenlied for America; an Odyssey for Main Street. Bone Music reaches out to embrace America exactly that down inside the apocalyptic is an author trying to name his people by their secret name.

Genres: Fiction, Speculative Fiction

248 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1995

About the author

Alan Rodgers (1959 - 2014) was a science fiction and horror writer, editor, and poet.

Reviews

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

WOW! This book is not something that you can pick up, put down, and pick back up again! It keeps you on your toes most of the time. The multiple story lines will keep you busy. I read this book because it was required reading for my Blues Culture in American Studies class. It really helps if you have a background knowledge of the blues legends that are all throughout this novel. Having learned about them in my class, following the story was that much easier. VERY interesting, and sometimes VERY weird.

[Amy Casil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having worked on this book, this would be the third time I'd read it. I first read Bone Music before I ever met Alan. I could not put the book down and thought it was incredible. I was never the biggest blues fan but I had gone to Mississippi and visited the Delta locations, including the famous "Crossroads" and all three of Robert Johnson's potential graves. Bone Music nailed the Blues and nailed the whole feeling of timelessness about the Delta. I will never forget the story of Lisa and her mother which is the main story in the book.

[Ryan Edmonds · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lord of the rings but with bluesmen in place of wizards. It was like nothing else i've ever read, but i didn't love it. A for effort.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting idea with a unique style.