Last Night at the Blue Angel is a wonderful debut. I was very impressed because Rotert's characters were all so engaging and well formed. Also, it painted a very cool picture of the jazz scene in 1960s Chicago.
The narration switches between ten year old Sophia, the precociously awkward and old-before-her time daughter of single mom Naomi Hill (the second narrator), an aspiring singer and extreme beauty.
We meet them on the night Naomi becomes famous, her last performance at the Blue Angel nightclub, then they both take us back in time through the events leading up to that night.
Sophia is the sadly sweetest story teller – thoughtful, painfully worried about her mother, dreading the nuclear bomb she's concerned will drop and staying busy creating lists of all the inventions she will need to recreate. Her anxieties about her living situation permeate the book, and mirror the feel of the larger events of the time: segregation, sexual experimentation and free love. It is a story full of revelations, surprises and a heartbreaking conclusion.
Definitely worth checking out on Edelweiss.
– Annie