Independence Blues

Garvey (White Gold) explores in this vibrant tale a Jamaican family’s experiences in the U.S. during the final decades of the Jim Crow era. In Jamaica, Madeline Jans overcomes severe illness and emotional abuse as a child to become a feisty young woman and marries Emerson Gardner, an aspiring doctor, while still a teen in the mid-1930s. As Madeline pursues nursing, singing, and sewing to help pay the bills, Emerson’s academic and professional endeavors take them to the U.S., and they settle in Los Angeles in 1952. In 1963 they leave California with their nine-year-old son and start a cross-country road trip, filled with bickering, to Miami, where they plan to catch a ship back to Jamaica. Throughout, the story transitions between the perspectives of Madeline and Emerson at different stages in their lives, and the internal monologue of their son is endearingly narrated during the three-day road trip: “I thought about walls and why it was that grown-ups... kept on building them.” Garvey mixes thoughtful insights about relationships and the changing world with the couple’s resistance to racial injustice (at a whites-only restaurant, they manage to get service after Madeline tells the manager her husband is with the Department of Health). Rather than sculpt a plot, Garvey offers a rich sense of the family’s experience. This character-driven outing is a trip worth taking. (Self-published)