A Drop of Patience - William Melvin Kelley

Quercus publishing - <p>The second novel from the internationally acclaimed author of A Different Drummer</p> <p>At the age of five, a blind African-American boy is handed over to a brutal state home. Here Ludlow Washington will suffer for eleven years, until his prodigious musical talent provides him an unlikely ticket back into the world.</p> <p>The property of a band, playing for down-and-outs in a southern dive, Ludlow's pioneering flair will take him to New York and the very top of the jazz scene - where his personal demons will threaten to drag him back down to the bottom.</p> <p>A Drop of Patience is the story of a gifted and damaged man entirely set apart - by blindness, by race, by talent - who must wrestle with adversity and ambition to generate the acceptance and self-worth that have always eluded him.</p>