If I was expecting anything from this mad, mad book, it was a straightforward rendering of Jimmie Rodgers's short, familiar lifenot an action-packed noir, complete with gangsters and gun battles; a traveling nurse with a satchel of narcotics; the thoughtful voices of sadly forgotten bluesmen; beautiful automobiles; an indictment of the recording industry; lost, grieving children; and a meditation on family. All in 232 pages. The result is a crazy-in-the-best way, long-overdue corrective: it saves Jimmie Rodgers from his own legend. -- Tony Earley * author of Jim the Boy * Jimmie Rodgers comes a-yodelin' out of Paul Burch's novel as if he were with us today. This is a tour de force of musical imagination. -- Roy Blount Jr. * author of Save Room for Pie * Paul Burch has made up the truth of Jimmie Rodgers's life better than any mere facts could ever conveyeven though you'd have to be in possession of a million biographical facts to pull off this kind of vernacular Huck Finn sleight-of-hand prose magic. I suspect the sleight-of-hand has something to do with the fact that Burch is a musician himself. He played his tune in the key of rollicky, mixed in with all the sadness. From start to end, I didn't hear a false note on the page. This felt like such an authentic American story, in sore need of a new telling. -- Paul Hendrickson * author of Hemingways Boat, National Book Award finalist and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award * What if all the stories about Jimmie Rodgers were trueand someone could make you believe them? The result is a book of wonders. -- Greil Marcus * author of Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock n Roll Music * Paul Burch assigned himself a difficult and audacious writing task: creating a fictional account of the life of country music legend Jimmie Rodgers through a multitude of voices, including Rodgers own. He meets the challenge with his bold novel. . . . [ W]ith the richness of its story and its grounding in period detail, Meridian Rising fills a void. Burchs fictional portrait is likely to become an indispensable resource for people interested in this icon of American music. -- Jim Patterson * Chapter 16 * A colorful story of possibilities about the Mississippi native known as the Father of Country Music. . . . Burch brings an authenticity to this inventive tale about the birth of country music -- Suzanne Van Atten * Atlanta Journal-Constitution * Few writers immerse themselves in the worlds they bring to the page as thoroughly and imaginatively as Paul Burch has in this fictionalized account of the life of country music originator Jimmie Rodgers. A musician and scholar of the sweet spot where country meets blues and jazz, Burch goes beyond conventional narrative to bring this complicated legend to life, capturing Rodgers's own voice and surrounding it with a chorus of collaborators, music-biz types, and loved ones. Immersive and surprising, Meridian Rising points toward new ways of keeping music history alive. -- Ann Powers * author of Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell * Ive got a few friends who possess encyclopedic knowledge of the history of country music, and they can all tell you where the bodies are buried. Paul Burch can show you where the ghosts reside. -- Steve Earle * singer-songwriter * Evoking the emerging music culture of early twentieth-century America, [ Jimmie Rodgers's] story is told here via imagined memoirs, letters, historical photographs, and fictional interviews with his friends, fellow musicians, and business associates. . . . Meridian Rising is an imaginative, insightful biographical novel about an inimitable musician who had a fascinating influence on American music. -- Kristen Rabe * Foreword Reviews *
