Jake and Jasmine
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
Jake is standing near the big fountain in Lincoln Center, listening. Waterspray on the circular pool drones like a distant drum roll. Yellow cars rattle and honk down Broadway, an orchestra of taxicabs tuning up. On the other side of the fountain, beyond the opera house, he can see that huge sculpture--the Henry Moore pictured in the catalog they sent him when he applied for a scholarship--a reclining feminine shape, voluptuous in the reflecting water. Two boys in short pants and trendy sneakers scamper around the rim of the fountain, calling out loudly to each other, teetering on the edge. Their chatter rises clearly from the collective din of voices and laughter, like soloists in a choir. For as long as he can remember, the sounds in his head have turned into music: the wind in the pine trees, his father's ax in the woodlot, their old farmhouse creaking in winter. And later, his first set of drums, a guitar, and at last, when he was ten, his own piano. The two boys turn and run back towards him on the rim of the pool. One of them stops suddenly, wavering. He is about to fall into the water but a girl grabs him at the last minute. She is Black, about twenty, his own age, slender, dressed in a cool white dress, cotton, he thinks. She wears no makeup and no jewelry. Her long black hair spills over her shoulders, her skin gilded by the September sun, a strip of whiteness between her smiling lips, her voice, when she cautions the two little boys, like music. She turns, facing him. Did their eyes meet? Jake reaches his hand out, silently, but she is at least fifty feet away. The most beautiful face he has ever seen is burned into his vision, as permanent as the music he hears everywhere all day long. She was like a delicate melody, her voice on the breeze for only a minute, then, suddenly, gone. Jake's eyes circle the plaza, the blue and yellow Chagall murals, the tiny curled leaves of city trees flickering in the sunlight. Shadows with violin cases hurry through the arcade of the State Theater, musicians late for practice. Jake’s mind is racing. I shouldn't have missed a single beat, I should have run after her. She's probably a student like me. I could have caught up with her if I had acted fast enough, started a conversation. Doubts plague him, a fear she may just be passing by, like millions in this city he has lived in for only a week. Ranks of people, eyes fixed downward or straight ahead, not noticing each other. Now I may never see her again. It's all a matter of timing. Tempo, Mozart said, is everything.
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
One of America’s first great love stories of the twenty-first century
Jake, a poor white boy from Appalachia, is a musical genius. When he arrives at Juilliard on a scholarship, the first person he meets is Jasmine, also a talented student, but enormously rich, cultivated, and the cherished daughter of a powerful Black family.
Their love affair is strongly opposed by Jasmine’s relatives and only half-heartedly accepted by Jake’s. Growing in fame and prestige as both performer and composer, the innocent boy from the hills and the beautiful and sophisticated Jasmine of Newport and Central Park West struggle against hostility and outright violence in their attempt to find happiness together.
Written in straightforward but lyrical prose that brings the music itself to life on page after page, the story unfolds in New York, Newport, Paris, the Berkshires, and Greenbrier County, West Virginia. Strengthened by a subplot involving Jasmine’s lawyer brother and his actor-lover Lance, the novel sweeps the reader along with its rapid development and full cast of intriguing characters, all caught up in a web of complex relationships that defy the destructive power of bigotry and racism.
About the Author
C. D. Webb began his writing career as a poet, first appearing in a national magazine at age sixteen. Poems written when he was nineteen were anthologized by Amherst professor and editor Rolfe Humphries in his collection New Poems by American Poets #2 published by Ballantine Books. Webb concentrated in English and French literature as an undergraduate and pursued graduate studies in British literature at the University of Wisconsin. He also holds an interdisciplinary master’s degree in psychology and sociology from the Graduate Faculty of the New School University in New York City. As he continued to publish poems in regional journals, C. D. Webb studied with the poet and novelist James Dickey, Paul Engle of the Iowa Writers Workshop, and the Indian novelist Krishna Vaid. He simultaneously launched an administrative career with cultural institutions, leaving his post as Development Consultant on the staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to found his own company specializing in the visual and performing arts. For several years he was Chairman of the Board of the Circle Repertory Company in New York, which led him to an interest in the theater. Jake and Jasmine is his first published novel. Three other books are scheduled to appear in the near future: two more novels, The Credence of Christopher Craig and The Playoff, and a collection of four of his plays. C. D. Webb lives in New York City and in Berkshire County, Massachusetts.