There's something special about that first great book you read in a year. After I started 2024 off with a couple of clunkers, The Mayor of Maxwell Street had me captivated from the start, and the precise prose and quick-witted dialogue that author Avery Cunningham manages to pack into her debut was like a breath of fresh air.
The novel is set in Chicago, in the summer of 1921. Our main character is Penelope "Nelly" Sawyer, the daughter of the "wealthiest Negro in America" (Cunningham's term, in an effort to "adhere to historical accuracy"), and we first meet Nelly at her brother's funeral. Nelly lives in Richmond, Kentucky, on her family's horse farm, and so she expects her stay in Chicago to be brief. However, her mother has other plans. There's to be a Cotillion in Chicago at the end of the summer -- a presentation of the eligible bachelorettes from "hundreds of the most prominent Colored families and peoples from New Orleans to Boston" -- and against her wishes, Nelly will be participating.
Thus, Nelly is thrust onto the socialite scene, with sharp-tongued Sequoia McArthur (a terrific character) as her minder and guide. At one of the first scheduled events -- a polo match -- Nelly meets Tomás Escalante y Roche, one of the polo players whose "uncle is a ...French marquis, and (whose) father owns half of Mexico". Tomás's horse is one Nelly happened to raise herself on the Sawyer horse farm, and she gives Tomás some pointed suggestions on what he's doing wrong with his handling of the mare, feedback that someone of his stature is highly unaccustomed to hearing. That stark honesty creates an alluring attraction for Tomás, and he begins a slow and intentional courtship.
Tomás is the easy choice -- he's essentially a prince! -- if Nelly is going to emerge from the Cotillion summer betrothed, but of course it can't be that straightforward. Enter Jay Shorey. Nelly originally met Jay at her brother's funeral, where he immediately caught her attention. They shared a moment, and an unlikely dance, and no small amount of mutual attraction. Jay is the "bad boy" to Tomás's princely pedigree: while Jay moves in many of the same high society circles, he doesn't have the family connections. Instead, he's a bit of a gangster under the protection of his "god-uncle"; he operates a speakeasy, which provides him access to a plethora of people in Chicago, both wealthy high society members as well as the seedy underbelly of the most corrupt town in America.
So, is this a love triangle, "which will she choose?" type of story? Yes, a bit. But while the first portion of the book focuses on Nelly's introduction to high society in Chicago and her developing relationships, the true crux of the story is revealed about a quarter of the way through. Nelly's passion, we come to learn, is journalism, and for the past year she had been anonymously submitting articles to The Chicago Defender, a Black-run newspaper. Nelly's brother was the conduit and willing confidante for her secret passion, and with him gone, she is faced with a decision: meet with editor Richard Norris and reveal her identity, or allow her dream to die with her brother.
She chooses the former, meeting Norris in a dingy cafeteria, and after convincing him she is the actual author of the articles, she's presented with a difficult reality: Norris won't allow her to publish under her name because of her father, her family's position in society, and the backlash he'd received from Ambrose Sawyer if he did. After Nelly expresses her disappointment, Norris finally capitulates, barely. He gives her an impossible assignment that, if accomplished, will allow her to bury her pseudonym and publish under her own byline. The task? I'll let Norris describe it:
"You want a byline? All right, Ms. Sawyer. Here's a byline for you. A shadowy figure showed up in conversation a couple years ago and has inspired all kinds of stories ever since. No one knows exactly where he lays his head, but on the beat, he's called the Mayor of Maxwell Street. There's been some recent coordination among the local bosses across race lines, you see. Italians, Irish, Jewish, Bronzeville. The status quo is them killing each other over street corners, but now they're working together. I suspect this 'Mayor' has something to do with that...You give me a profile identifying this person, Penelope Sawyer, and I'll print your name in black and white, come what may."
The assignment isn't just impossible, it's also dangerous, but Nelly accepts it with almost no hesitation. And thus, her journey begins to unmask the "Mayor" and achieve her true passion.
The story is compelling on multiple levels, and the writing is top-notch. I was wholly impressed by author Avery Cunningham -- for a debut novel, the precision of her prose and command of convincing dialogue was truly unexpected. I found myself continuously highlighting different sentences that captivated me, especially around Cunningham's masterful use of similes and metaphors. Turns of phrase like "(she) hummed and swiveled her head, eyes touching everything and everyone like the Angel of Death searching for firstborns to slaughter", or "when he spoke, he carried the severity of a long winter", or "(she) walked through the gossip and the sneers like tall grass. It brushed against clothes, tickled her hands, and left its seeds embedded in her skin."
Great stuff, right?
I thought Cunningham also achieved a Goldilocks "just right" amount of racial commentary included throughout the novel. Given the plot, it was an expected (and necessary) component, and she manages to incorporate examples from across the spectrum of experiences likely encountered by the Black community 100 years ago without preaching or lecturing to the reader. She also creates a diverse set of characters and situations that allow her to tackle the role of wealth, class, occupation, skin tone, and a variety of other factors on those experiences, all without detracting from the story. One passage stands out, when Nelly challenges Jay on a situation where he was passing for white, something he could often pull off given his father was Black and his mother white. Jay says:
"There are two candy jars, right? One marked for Negroes, and one for white folk. The Negro -- under penalty of death -- can only take from one jar. The white man, though, he can take from one or the other. He can take from both. Never mind that the jars have the exact same candy; the white man still gets to choose. That is all I want, Nelly. The freedom to choose. I don't want to look like them, or act like them, or be them. But I want their options."
There were a few small imperfections for me -- some inconsistency of pacing, for example -- but those bits that I'd tweak were rare. While it's very early in the year, The Mayor of Maxwell Street is clearly the best book I've read so far in 2024, and I predict it will be quite some time before it's dethroned, and it being displaced at #1 is no guarantee. This will certainly end up in my Top 10 for 2024, and it has a legitimate shot at Book of the Year. Very highly recommended.
The Mayor of Maxwell Street
3.8 | 195 ratings
Price: 26.21
Last update: 06-08-2024
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