This year marks the 62nd anniversary of the first Freedom Rides. They are the backdrop of my historical novel Night on Fire, in which Billie Simms, a white girl, and Jarmaine Jones, her African American friend, see what's happening in their hometown of Anniston, Alabama, and set out on a Freedom Ride of their own. Here is the prologue.

One day in the spring of 1961, my street was the center of the world. 

People read about it in newspapers and watched it on TV. They heard about it on NBC, the BBC, and Radio Moscow. The President held meetings. The FBI investigated.

What they saw were Negroes and white people together—traveling, marching, getting beaten up and burned. It started in my little town of Anniston, Alabama, and it moved to Birmingham and Selma and Washington, DC. I watched the flames catch and spread to Montgomery, where they were fanned and blessed by Martin Luther King. The people sang, the mob roared, and I glimpsed freedom. 

I thought freedom was just a word, but it’s not. My friend Jarmaine taught me that. Freedom is hands and feet, bodies and faces, wounds and scars. It’s a bell, and I rang it. It’s a bus, and I climbed on. Along the way, I thought I would get answers. Instead I found questions.

Why do people hate each other? 

If a law is bad, should you break it?

How can good people be so cruel? 

More about Night on Fire

Stories from My Life

Several weeks ago, I announced the publication of Stories from My Life, a series of eight short memoirs I’ve written between novels. If you missed that announcement, you can read it here. 

Here's another excerpt from Words and Music: Best Friends and Musical Partners, the fifth short memoir.

Shortly after Tony arrived in the orchestra, I began noticing something: when he was there, I played better. For a while I thought it was my imagination, a good feeling I got when my friend was nearby. But others noticed, too. I asked Tony about it.

It wasn’t my imagination, he explained. It was the way he played, like all good second trumpets. Tony had learned it from his teacher, Irving Bush.

Here is the secret: the louder the low note, the better the high note sounds. When parts are written in octaves, a really good second trumpet is playing incredibly loud. If it’s done correctly and the low note is in tune, the sound waves will mesh and the high note will soar; it has surprisingly little to do with the person playing the high note, which in this case was me. I sounded great, and the reason—owing to physics—was Tony.

I didn’t always play first trumpet. Later, in community orchestras, I played second and Tony was first. Eventually I didn’t play at all, but the idea remained the same. It’s been true for years now. Tony supports me. I support Tony. Our parallel lives advance in octaves, and whoever’s on second trumpet plays incredibly loud.

Learn more about Words and Music.