Thursday, July 21, 2011

On July 25, Southern fiction fans are invited to board The Night Train (Little, Brown and Company), the 10th novel by University of North Carolina Wilmington creative writing professor Clyde Edgerton.

Set in 1963, The Night Train is the story of 17-year-old Dwayne Hallston, who dreams of getting his band on a local television show in his hometown of Starke, N.C. Having recently discovered James Brown's Live at the Apollo album, he spends hours in the storage room of his father's shop studying Brown's dance moves and rehearsing songs.

Meanwhile, Larry Lime, Dwayne's forbidden black friend, has become an apprentice to a local jazz musician named the Bleeder. Larry dreams of playing the piano like Thelonious Monk; his mother hopes music will allow her son to escape the South.

Publisher's Weekly wrote in a pre-release starred review of the book, "Edgerton sustains a wry tone in this lightly plotted novel, where the action is confined to band practices, a chicken flung over a cinema balcony and well-intentioned but comically inept attempts at integration. The characters are drawn with compassion and droll humor, and while not much happens to them, what happens between them is the work of a generous, restrained writer whose skill and craft allows small scenes to tell a larger, more profound story."

A professor at UNCW since 1998, Edgerton says, "It's so good to be able to write fiction in the midst of supportive and talented colleagues and students who write, edit and teach. To have your job so closely wed to your art is something that can make a university a special place. I am lucky to be with a department that now has the nationally recognized and respected magazine, ecotone, and its book publishing arm, Lookout Books."

A past Guggenheim Fellow, Edgerton has five novels selected as New York Times Notable Books. He received The Ragan Old North State Award for Non-fiction for Solo: My Adventures in the Air (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005).

Edgerton, an avid musician who plays the keyboard, banjo, mandolin and guitar, will read and perform music at several stops to promote The Night Train. In addition to the date and times listed below, he is slated as the Nov. 14 guest of Prologue, the StarNews/WHQR book club. His talk will begin at 7 p.m. on the third floor of the WHQR gallery space, located in downtown Wilmington.

July 28: 7:30 p.m. (Raleigh) 
Quail Ridge Books

July 29: noon (Durham)
Health Arts Network at Duke (HAND)
(Osler Literary Roundtable series)

July 29: 7 p.m. (Durham)
The Regulator Bookshop

July 30: 11 a.m. (Pittsboro)
McIntyre's Books in Fearrington Village

July 30: 6 p.m. (Chapel Hill)
Flyleaf Books

Aug. 19: 7 p.m. (Wilmington)
Two Sisters Bookery

Sept. 1: 6 p.m. (Oxford, Miss.)
Square Books

Sept. 2 (Atlanta, Ga.)
Decatur Book Festival

Oct. 8 (Durham)
Learned Place House Concerts

Oct. 14 (Nashville, Tenn.)
Southern Festival of Books

Oct. 25: 1 p.m. (Whiteville)
Southeastern Community College

The Night Train book trailer can be seen at http://vimeo.com/25265338, and a Facebook page is available at https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Night-Train-by-Clyde-Edgerton/138607549539220.