A darling and brilliant new novel that explores race and class in the 1950s America.
The war is over, the soldiers are returning, and Nat King Cole is back in his home town of Montgomery, Alabama, for a rare performance. His childhood friend, Nat Weary, plans to propose to his sweetheart, and the singer will honor their moment with a special song. But while the world has changed, segregated Jim Crow Montgomery remains the same. When a white man attacks Cole with a pipe, Weary leaps from the audience to defend him - an act that will lead to a 10-year prison sentence.
But the singer will not forget his friend and the sacrifice he made. Six months before Weary is released, he receives a remarkable offer: he will be Nat King Cole's driver and bodyguard. It is the promise of a new life removed from the terror, violence, and degradation of Jim Crow Alabama.
Weary discovers that, while in Los Angeles is far different from the deep South, it is a place of discrimination, mistrust, and intolerance where a black man - even one as talented and popular as Nat King Cole - is not wholly welcome.
An indelible portrait of prejudice and promise, friendshit and loyalty, Driving the King is a daring look at race and class in pre-Civil Rights America, played out in the lives of two remarkable men.
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“Narrator Adam Lazarre-White perfectly conveys the two very opposite voices of 1950s African-American singer Nat King Cole and his driver, Nat Weary…Lazarre-White inhabits Weary as he serves time in a tough Southern prison and then portrays his changed life when he works for Cole. Listeners will feel as if they’re privy to conversations in pre-civil rights America, a period when buses were boycotted and Cole had to sponsor his own fifteen-minute program. Most impressive is Lazarre-White’s rendering of Cole’s lovely, mellow speaking voice.”
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