Kindred souls

A love for the sound of British Northern soul leads to an unlikely alliance in this big-hearted novel.

In present-day Chicago, septuagenarian Earlon "Bucky" Bronco, a former soul singer, is struggling to get by. Childless and recently widowed after a 50-year marriage to his beloved Maybelline, he's feeling bereft, as if he's "slowly fading from view". He's also addicted to opioids to retain his mobility, the pain he suffers in his hips a "constant blaze that burnt to the core of his bones".

He has received an unexpected invitation to perform songs he hasn't sung in half a century at a Northern soul weekend in Scarborough, a seaside town in North Yorkshire. Despite his physical impairment, and having never travelled outside the US, Bucky accepts the invitation.

He doesn't realise that Northern soul, heavily influenced by Detroit's Motown sound, was popular in the 1960s and 70s in the UK, when the music was played in dance clubs throughout northern England and the Midlands.