This novel wraps up a trilogy about the life and times of Scott Joplin. The year is 1951, and the town of Sedalia, MO, is planning a ceremony to honor the ragtime king and place a plaque up on the wall of the “colored” high school. The only white pupil of Joplin, Brun Campbell, the old Ragtime Kid, who has lived as a barber in Venice, CA, for many years, playing his piano in his shop, wants to create a more fitting memorial to Joplin, hoping to play at the ceremony and induce the citizens of Sedalia to build a museum about ragtime.
Into this mix is a young 17-year-old New Jersey lad who becomes enthused about ragtime on hearing some tunes on the radio, the negotiations with Joplin’s widow for a journal he wrote, the death of Brun’s long-time friend and an assortment of complications, including members of the Sedalia Ku Klux Klan and competition among various persons to obtain control of the journal for a variety of reasons.
Entertaining in more ways than one, the novel, of course, as is the entire trilogy, is based loosely on historical fact and real and imagined persons. Well-written and constructed with an eye to keeping it suspenseful, “Ragtime” is recommended.
