Publication Date: July 23, 2024
Chicago, IL – December 1923
Terrified, racing from an irate shopkeeper who has accused her of stealing, her comatose mother sprawled in a dark hallway, four-year-old Tayvie Jackson falls asleep while hiding in a car. Hours later, Tayvie, who understands almost no English, awakens many miles from a home she barely knew. Forced to live with deceitful relatives during the Depression in the Jim Crow south, Tayvie and her adopted mother later escape, hoping to build on young Tayvie’s fledgling career as a jazz singer.
In 1938, Tayvie innocently signs a six-month contract to appear at the Moulin Rouge in Paris. Almost immediately, distorted allegations erupt surrounding her involvement with the historically devastating Kristallnacht, the propaganda broadcasts called Charlie and His Orchestra, and the elite Nazi playgrounds in Berlin and Paris, all of which force her into a demoralizing relationship with a strategic member of Hitler’s most despised inner clique, Dr. Joseph Goebbels.
An extraordinary coming-of-age journey of a talented, young, biracial jazz singer, who struggles to perfect her craft on two continents during the volatile 1930s & ’40s despite appalling circumstances.
A young biracial girl’s life changes when she hides in the backseat of a car, ultimately taking her from Chicago to Wisconsin.
Tayvie’s Story represents the third installment in A Sparrow Alone series by Mim Eichmann. It can be read as a standalone, but each story highlights a female main character battling against the odds.
Although born with a different name, the young girl becomes Helen Mason Campbell. With the Great Depression upon them, relocating to the South and extended family puts Helen and her adopted mother in poverty’s crosshairs.
The young Helen, though, has an incredible singing voice. Through all kinds of adversity, she manages to launch a career and earns a spot in Paris, where she unfortunately catches the eye of a powerful Nazi.
It’s a story highlighting how something positive can come out of the pits of despair. Poverty and racial inequality shadow the first part of the book while political challenges wreak havoc in the second.
One of the challenges from a reader’s perspective was following the conversations while the characters were in Orange Mound and Memphis. Using dialects can easily serve as a distraction.
Tayvie’s Story highlights the struggle of a young singer trying to survive and thrive under challenging circumstances.
A graduate from the Jordan College of Music at Butler University, in Indianapolis, IN, Chicago-based author Mim Eichmann has found that her creative journey has taken her down many exciting, interwoven pathways as an award-winning published lyricist, short story author and songwriter, professional folk musician, choreographer, by-lined journalist, and now, bestselling historical fiction author. Her debut historical fiction novel, “A Sparrow Alone”, published by Living Springs Publishers in April 2020, has met with extremely enthusiastic reviews and was a semi-finalist in the 2020 Illinois Library Association’s Soon-to-be-Famous Project. Its much-anticipated sequel, “Muskrat Ramble” was published by LSP in March 2021 and has garnered equally enthusiastic high ratings.
