 Welcome to my Web site!
I'm Denis Gray, author of Lucky: a novel.
About the Author
Denis Gray is the author of thirty books, four novellas, thirteen plays, and over sixty short stories. He lives in Long Island, NY with his wife, Barbara, where they follow their two granddaughters' pursuits with great interest and joy.
About my latest book, Lucky: a novel
It is June 1925, the dawning of a new, spectacular riverboat season, and "Noble Prince's Red-Hot Rhythm Band" is set to play "hot jazz" on the Mississippi River!
Walter Von Bulow, the owner of the Morning Queen, has discovered Lucinda "Lucky" Martinson. Lucky's a talented young jazz singer. Von Bulow hires her in the year 1925, to sing in Prince's band. But she's in New Orleans for other reasons: Lucky Martinson's on a personal "quest" to reconcile her past. Lucky's left Harlem and her boyfriend Tolliver Williams--a fellow jazz musician Lucky's in love with. She's put her personal and professional life at risk in traveling to New Orleans, Louisiana to unbury truths and lies. Lucky's sucked further into New Orleans's network of mystery and intrigue once she uncovers these family secrets in a historical city where voodoo and superstition co-exist, and can destroy the people you love.
Noble Prince nurtures Lucky's singing ambitions, but Victor Malreaux--a young, dynamic trumpet player in the Prince band--nurtures her soul. Victor falls in love with Lucky. But Victor Malreaux as well as Noble Prince are in for a rude awakening from Lucky Martinson; each for different and distinct reasons.
Reviews of Lucky
Kirpal Gordon
As a longtime fan of Denis Gray's drama and fiction, I should start by saying how particularly moved I was by reading "Lucky." It is a new direction for Gray because it's not just a captivatiing love story or play rich in dialect and dialogue but a novel chock-full of historical and evocative details about New Orleans, the riverboats and the jazz bands that went up and down the Mississippi River during the Roaring Twenties. His insights into the jazz life, especially how musicians related to one another as well as a hostile Jim Crow situation that at times misunderstood the music, are alone worth the price of the book. However, Gray makes the case way more compelling by contextualizing the struggle of the Red Hot Rhythm Band as they welcome Victor Malreaux, a trumpet-playing young buck, onto the riverboat, thanks to Walter Von Bulow, the owner of the "Morning Queen," who invites him to audition for bandleader Noble Prince.
The novel has many fascinating subplots, but when Lucky enters the story, having put her life at risk as she leaves Harlem and arrives in New Orleans in an attempt to reconcile her past, all the many intrigues begin to cohere and soon reveal a climax that changes the lives of all the main characters in unexpected ways. Although the novel is set in the past, Gray is a master of delivering the tale into the "everlasting present," and this you-are-there quality gave me the feeling that I was indeed witnessing history being made. A profound joy!
Kirpal Gordon, author of Round Earth, Open Sky
Gayl Teller
Lucid, lyrical, lovely, lasting, Denis Gray's Lucky vibrantly realizes life on the Mississippi riverboat in the 20's, especially from the jazz musicians' points of view. It evinces the stratifications from racism and materialism on board as microcosm of the society at large, and then the humanity that defies these barriers in the tender and heartfelt relationship between Noble and Von Holz. Gray vividly portrays the outgrowth of the oppression and poverty associated with racism in the gambling, violence, womanizing, and drinking, and then the humanity that defies these degradations in the strong family ties of the Malreaux family and in the growing, beautiful love between Noble and Vivienne.
Gray captures the great significance of jazz and art (including dress making ) that no racism could contain and their especial force for breaking down racist barriers. From the cast of memorable characters, Noble stands out as the richest, showing the base effects of discrimination in his womanizing and alcohol, and as an evolving character, the dynamic healing force of love in his relationships with Vivienne, Von Holz, his musicians, and his music.
The jazzy, bustling, staccato rhythms in Gray's prose mirror New Orleans with its mixed cultures as a living, breathing, pulsing, jazz organism of myth, magic, longings, heartaches, clashing cultures, dangers, romance, and transcendence. Redolent of Mark Twain's depiction of life along the Mississippi and its ailing race relations, Lucky plumbs even deeper into the black race's daily struggles, hopeful dreams, original voice, and important link to all of humanity.
Gayl Teller, Nassau County Poet Laureate
Darryl Alladice
Denis Gray's Lucky is a very moving and vibrant novel set in New Orleans during the early 20th century, focusing on the trials and triumphs of the lives of a band leader, the woman he falls in love with and how their lives intertwine with those of the supporting characters, their lives, and changing events all during a time when segregation still had its hold on America post-Reconstruction and pre-Depression. Gray's attention to historical and social details of the time are impeccable, and he gives the reader many unexpected twists and turns as any accomplished writer should. Any Hollywood producer should take notice as this novel makes great cinematic material.
Darryl Alladice, author of Jaundice
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