Alice “Nobody” James is on a train headed west running from the man, dicey life, and deal gone bad that put a gun-shot wound in her side. It’s 1921 and she has been living by her wits her entire life, blending into the back-ground, snitching on the Mob, getting people killed, drinking the bubbly, wearing the clothes, ready to take a bullet for a friend, and trying to find her tribe. Trying to find herself. That sort.
Her immediate rescuer is a porter named Max who takes her to the end of the line at the Paragon Hotel in Portland, Oregon. It’s a blacks only kind of place in a white’s only kind of town. The Ku Klux Klan rules supreme. Alice manages to find a place with the people at the Paragon much as she had made a place for herself in Harlem. She’s smart, quick witted, ballsy, sassy, and fearless. That sort.
Adventures ensue. Speakeasies, bootleggers, love, crooked cops, crooked but in the right kind of way cops, big- hearted people, people who aren’t what they seem people, amusement park shenanigans, a cross burning, a secret cabin, a train ride south. Alice navigates the escapades with style, intelligence, wit, and humor. Humor that is sometimes very dark.
All of it is used as a superb vehicle to explore Portland and Harlem during the early years of Prohibition. The language, the racism, the cocktails, the Mob, the Klan, the bar scene, the killing, Italian culture, the rain, and the people. Some of it exceptionally lovely and some of it extremely ugly.
This is a ride worth taking. Hop on the Pullman car with Alice and enjoy the trip. It’s a good one.
Carol Lloyd is the Churchill County Librarian and has been in Fallon for four years. She comes to us from Palm Springs, California by way of Red Rock, Nevada. She owns her own Superman Phone booth where guests pose for photos in her Superman cape.
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