In an award-winning debut novel, a sharecropper's daughter navigates celebrity encounters, bootlegging and gangster activities in Jazz Age Chicago before sharing her story with a grieving film student nearly a century later.

1925: Chicago is the jazz capital of the world, and the Dreamland Café is the ritziest black-and-tan club in town. Honoree Dalcour, a sharecropper's daughter, is willing to work hard and dance every night on her way to the top. She's socializing with celebrities, but with the temptations of bootleg whiskey, gambling, and gangsters a young woman driven by ambition might risk more than she can stand to lose. 2015: Film student Sawyer Hayes arrives at the bedside of 110-year-old Honoree Dalcour. He has rested all his hope on this frail but formidable woman, the only living link to the legendary Oscar Micheaux. If she can fill in the blanks in his research, perhaps he can complete his thesis and begin a new chapter in his life. As Honoree reveals her past and her secrets, Sawyer fights tooth and nail to keep his. -- adapted from back cover