Searching For Bonzo’s Grave
Photo by Christy Alexander Hallberg
Cheerio,
Happy September 16! I hope all is well with you as we venture toward the Harvest Moon on the 20th. Not that I’m superstitious or anything, but as the Kidderminster taxi driver in my forthcoming novel from Livingston Press, Searching For Jimmy Page, proclaims to eighteen-year-old protagonist Luna Kane as she transports Luna to the cemetery where Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, aka Bonzo, was laid to rest in 1980, “They say people go barking mad on a full moon.” Which reminds me of Luna’s recently-deceased great-grandfather Jesse’s cryptic warning, “Don’t eyeball the moon, do you get youself some bad luck.”
Like Led Zeppelin, myth and folklore play a vital role in the novel, as Luna weaves her way through the fantastical stories about her inception her free-spirited mother, Claudia, told her when Luna was a child and the Southern superstitions and folkways of her great-grandfather to try to unpack the complexities and contradictions of her life and discern her true identity. Along the way, she discovers that art—literature; Luna’s own writings; and music, namely the music of Led Zeppelin—have the power to shape one’s personal narrative in ways she’d never imagined.
In the aforementioned chapter with the taxi driver, which occurs in March of 1988, Luna, who has run away from her family’s farm in eastern North Carolina to embark on a vision quest in England to find Led Zeppelin’s elusive guitar wizard, hops a train bound for the West Midlands to pay her respects to Bonzo at the bucolic Rushock Parish churchyard of St. Michael’s church. During the journey from London’s Paddington Station to the Kidderminster train station, the closest one to the village, Luna records in her journal the surreal details of a drug-induced dream about her great-grandfather she had in the hours preceding her trip to the cemetery, as if the dream’s esoteric imagery were in some way prophetic. Here’s a snippet of that chapter, read by yours truly:
Stay tuned for the novel to find out what Luna encounters when she reaches the Kidderminster train station en route to the cemetery. In the meantime, leave a comment below to find out what I encountered when I made that same journey—like Luna, solo—on a cool August day in 2006. I’d be interested in hearing from those of you who have also made this pilgrimage.
Until the next blog posting, please join my mailing list and/or drop me a line in Contact to receive the latest news on Searching For Jimmy Page and to volunteer to write a review on your blog, social media sites, Goodreads, and Amazon. Join Team Hallberg to get the word out to your friends, family, book clubs, etc., about what, to my knowledge, is the first literary novel about Led Zeppelin.
Rock on, y’all!
Christy
Photo by Christy Alexander Hallberg
Photo by Christy Alexander Hallberg
Photo by Christy Alexander Hallberg
