Title: Blues and Trouble
Subtitle: twelve stories
First published: 1996
Description: In this extraordinary first book of stories, Tom Piazza delivers a tough and haunting vision of an America where the social, emotional, and spiritual ground shifts constantly underfoot.

Set in Memphis, Florida, New York, New Orleans, and elsewhere, Blues And Trouble offers a series of startling portraits - the troubled family of a Gulf Coast fisherman awaits a hurricane, a Jewish couple visiting the South encounter a dealer in Nazi memorabilia, an aging rock and roll piano player confronts an adoring specter from his past - alternating with a series of "blueses," shorter, voice-driven pieces that evoke a unique and uncanny mood of longing.
Subjects: Social life and customs, Fiction, New York Times reviewed, Manners and customs, Fiction, short stories (single author), Fiction, general
Places: United States
Time periods: 20th century
LC classification: PS3566.I23 B58 1996