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Trumpet

Jackie Kay

1998200 pagesabout 3–5 hours
1998
first published
  • 1998Pantheon Books · 278 pages · ENGISBN 9780375405099
  • 1998Picador · 278 pages · ENGISBN 9780330331456
  • 1999Picador · ENGISBN 9780330391597
  • 2024Pan Macmillan · ENGISBN 9781035038961
  • 1999Picador · 200 pagesISBN 9780330331463
  • 2016PicadorISBN 9781447289494
  • 2000Vintage · 288 pages · ENGISBN 9780375704635
  • 2011Picador USA · 200 pagesISBN 9780330511827

At its center is Joss Moody, a celebrated jazz trumpeter who created music that convinced everyone who heard it that they knew the man who made it. But Joss's death has proved them all wrong: Joss Moody lived his life inside a stunning secret. His wife, Millie, had known about it. But their adopted son, Colman, now in his thirties, has just learned of it. With everything he understood about himself and his family thrown into question, Colman forms an uncomfortable alliance with a journalist intent on telling Joss's story her own way. Millie, grieving and besieged by the press, secludes herself in their home in a small Scottish village, sinking into the aching solace of memory. Their two brilliantly realized voices -- one revisiting the past for comfort, the other for answers -- are interwoven with the equally evocative voices of Joss's drummer, of the doctor who discovered Joss's secret, of the funeral director who hid it for the last time, of the registrar of death certificates, and of the journalist. Together they reveal the startling and poignant story of Joss and Millie: how a complex, dazzling lie became the foundation for a family, a life, and a rare, unshakable love.

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