The Song Poet

In Depression-weary 1937, a once-promising New York City songwriter and a tragedy-haunted Appalachian poetess cross paths through a phony song poem contest — a scheme designed to bilk the gullible with false hope.

 

What starts as a scam becomes something sacred.

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With the help of friends, family, musicians, mobsters, and everyone in between — and after a flurry of train wrecks, boxing scandals, altar calls, radio hootenannies, and one genuinely catastrophic dirigible disaster (it's 1937, after all) — two broken people find their way back to who they were meant to be.

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The Song Poet is a novel about music, grief, and spiritual longing. About falling in love when you were certain you were finished. About the stubborn power of plain, flat-footed Love when Faith and Hope have taken extended sabbaticals.

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The novel grew from decades of research into American popular music and South Carolina history — and from the memoirs of my grandfather, George Sigalas, Sr. (1908–2005), Greek-born, Hell's Kitchen-raised mechanical whiz who rode motorcycles, strummed his guitar, and wrenched his way through the Depression.

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Grandpa George shows up in the story in full glory, alongside his real 1937 companions — including doomed heavyweight contender Arthur Huttick — with cameos by Shoeless Joe Jackson, Joe Louis, and the father of Eddie Rabbitt.

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One friend called it O Brother, Where Art Thou? meets The Notebook. After some negotiation, he revised that to: Pat Conroy meets Damon Runyon — if Guys and Dolls had a third act written by Wendell Berry.  

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That's closer. But it's as true as I could make it.

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