Lay Down Your Weary Tune
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In this debut novel, a ghostwriter of the memoirs of a reclusive folk music icon—part Woody Guthrie, part Bob Dylan—attempts to glean fact from fiction, only to discover the deeper he digs into the musician’s past, the more his own past rises to the surface
Despite his fame, Eli Page is a riddle wrapped in a myth, inside decades of mask-making. His past is so shrouded in gossip and half-truths that no one knows who he is behind the act. Jack Wyeth, a budding writer, joins Eli in Galesville, a small town on the border of New York and Vermont, only to learn that the musician’s mind is failing. As he scrambles to uncover the truth, Jack is forced to confront his own past, his own hang-ups, and his own fears. At the same time, he falls for a local artist who has secrets of her own, he becomes linked to a town controversy, and he struggles to let go of his childhood idols and bridge the divide between myth and reality.
Set against a folk Americana aesthetic, Lay Down Your Weary Tune is an emotionally charged exploration of myth-making, desire, and regret, and the inescapable bond between the past and present.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Belcher's debut novel is an adeptly written, richly textured novel about folk music. Thirty-year-old Jack Wyeth, a part-time folk singer and freelance music journalist, needs work. So he agrees to ghostwrite the memoir of Eli Page, a legendary folksinger and contemporary of Bob Dylan. Working as a stagehand, Jack first met Eli in 2001, when he gave a performance and advised the young Jack to "make sure what you're doin' means somethin." Jack drives to Eli's farm in Galesville, a rustic village on the New York Vermont border, where the curmudgeonly recluse Eli lives with his dog, Tig. Jack soon learns that his music idol won't be an easy or accommodating subject. In the meantime, he strikes up a romance with local artist Jenny Lee Flynn. While staying at Eli's farm, Jack does some sleuthing and uncovers mysterious figures from Eli's checkered past, including someone known only as H.M., with whom he had a doomed love affair. Some brushes with the law make matters all the messier. Belcher brings the folk music scene to life, but best of all is his ability to craft a cast of memorable characters.
