The Seven League Boots

In the triumphant concluding volume of the trilogy that began withWhistle GuitarandThe Spyglass Tree, Albert Murray gives us what is at once an African American coming-of-age novel and a pitch-perfect evocation of a touring jazz band at the height of the Swing era. Murray's hero, Scooter, graduates from an Alabama college and becomes a bass player in an ensemble headed by the legendary Bossman. As Scooter criss-crosses the United States, he and his bandmates find themselves retracing Sherman's march to the sea, the Underground Railroad, and the conquest of the West.The Seven League Bootsis nothing less than a jazz epic, so vivid, high-spirited, and infectious that readers will tap their feet to the music of its prose. "A work of joy, of celebration...a great work of art, a rich and moving song of the human spirit."--Los Angeles Times "A fictional tale spinner in the grand Southern tradition."--Washington Post Book World

Albert Murray is the author of The Omni-Americans, Stomping the Blues, The Hero and the Blues, South to a Very Old Place, Conjugations and Reiterations, and From the Briarpatch File. He is the coauthor of Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie and the coeditor of Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray. He lives in New York City.