this story to my publisher in 2019 and finished it in early 2020, before the world was gripped in our current troubles. The pandemic hadn't happened. There were no protests going on. I had no sense of what was coming when I wrote about Benny and Esther and the world they lived in. Even so, writing this story scared me. It felt big and unwieldy and fraught with land mines—hence the name of the band—that I wasn’t sure I could navigate. Unlike some of the novels I've written, there was no comfortable distance from the setting or the time. Yet I wasn’t alive in the sixties. I don’t have any firsthand knowledge of the decade this story was set in—not the music scene, the Mafia life, the political world, or the civil rights movement. I was not there. But if storytellers wrote only about things they had personally experienced, it would be like musicians playing only music they had personally written.
I don’t want to just sing my own songs; I want to sing the songs of many voices, even if the songs are painful and scary. I want to play all the chords. Like Benny said, you can’t appreciate the resolution without the dissonance. I can only hope I played the right notes and struck the right balance. I tried very hard to do just that.
First off, a quick thank-you to Uncle Jack Lomento, my favorite Sicilian, for letting me use his name for Pop, and a thank-you to my Grandpa Frank, who was born and raised in the Bronx and never lost the accent. I thought of you on every page, Grandpa.
With every work of historical fiction, I always like to separate the fiction from the fact. Of course Benny Lament and Esther Mine are fictional, as is their story, but many of the characters in this story are real.
Bo “the Bomb” Johnson’s character was loosely inspired by the real-life world heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, who was jailed in 1920 for having a relationship with a white woman. It wasn’t until recently that Jack Johnson received a presidential pardon. Jack Johnson wasn’t perfect, but he was a champion, and he didn’t deserve the treatment he got. It was his story that started me thinking about writing a character like him.
Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler, and engineer Tom Dowd of Atlantic Records were pioneers in the music industry and well-known advocates of Black artists and their music. Ahmet’s desire to sign Benny and Esther would have been right in character with the real man.
Berry Gordy, founder of Motown Records, is not fictional. He’s real, as is his family and his sister, Mrs. Esther Gordy Edwards, who played a small role in my story. I took pains to do my research, but I don’t know Berry Gordy personally, nor did I know Esther Gordy Edwards, but I admire both greatly and hope I did them justice. Of course Smokey Robinson and Ray Charles are real as well. The recent documentary Hitsville: The Making of Motown is a great resource if you want to learn more about an amazing American success story and hear Berry Gordy tell the tale in his own words.
Barry Gray, known in some circles as the Father of Talk Radio, was also a real person who worked for WMCA radio in New York. He had a long and storied career. I was able to find an autobiography he published in 1975 called My Night People that I greatly enjoyed. He interviewed Malcolm X in 1960, and I would highly recommend listening to the interview. It is so telling of the era and their respective places in it.
Patrick Sweeney, the prosecutor killed by Salvatore Vitale, is fictional, as is Uncle Sal. Apparently, there was an actual gangster by the name of Salvatore Vitale, but my character was not inspired or based on him or any other real person. However, Albert Anastasia, Murder Inc., and many of the gangsters mentioned in the story are real. The story of “Kid Twist” Reles being pushed from the window of the hotel on Coney Island the day he was set to testify against Anastasia is true, as is the story of Albert Anastasia’s murder in the barbershop at the Park Sheraton Hotel.
Politics and organized crime have a dirty history. There still exists some belief that the mob had a hand in JFK’s death and in the death of Martin Luther King Jr. Don’t go down the rabbit hole like I did, but just be aware that, like Pop tells Benny, everybody was a little bit rotten. The sixties were filled with some colorful characters, no doubt about it, and it was highly interesting, and sometimes discouraging, doing the research into so many of these intersecting worlds.
Finally, I am a huge fan of Gladys Knight. I was lucky enough to sing with her gospel choir for seven years. Those years are filled with moments I will never forget, but the thing I will most remember is listening to Gladys sing and tell her story. It is my hope that novels like The Songbook of Benny Lament echo some of the truths that I learned from Ms. Gladys. She said many times, “How can we ever learn to love each other if we don’t know each other’s stories?” And I took that to heart.
May we seek to learn each other’s stories so that we might love each other a little better.
Amy Harmon
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to my team at Lake Union, editor Jodi Warshaw and developmental editor Jenna Free, in particular. Your insight and suggestions made this process a joy, as usual.
To my personal beta readers and editors, Karey White, Amy Schmutz, Korrie Kelley, Renita McKinney, Alexandra Kane, Danielle Distler, and Jessica Teodoro. Thank you all for your love and input on this book. I am blessed to have been able to call on all of you. You made Benny better!
To my assistant, Tamara Debbaut, who always makes my work so much easier. Thank you for your friendship and steadiness. Your loyalty and love are irreplaceable.
To my agent, Jane Dystel, please don’t ever leave me. You have been an ongoing blessing.
To my sweet daughter, Claire, who helped me talk through a difficult scene (for hours!) and saved my sanity right at the end.
And finally, to the people who love me most. I wouldn’t be me without you. Thank you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amy Harmon is a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and New York Times bestselling author. Her books have been published in two dozen languages—truly a dream come true for a little country girl from Utah. Harmon has written sixteen novels, including the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestseller What the Wind Knows; the USA Today bestsellers The Smallest Part, Making Faces, and Running Barefoot; and the #1 Amazon bestselling historical novel From Sand and Ash, which won a Whitney Award for Book of the Year in 2016. Her novel A Different Blue is a New York Times bestseller. Her USA Today bestselling fantasy The Bird and the Sword was a Goodreads Best Book of 2016 finalist. For updates on upcoming book releases, author posts, and more, go to www.authoramyharmon.com.