We are pleased to welcome Avery Cunningham, author of The Mayor of Maxwell Street, to the John P. Holt Brentwood Library! Heralded as "a debut novel everyone will be talking about," The Mayor of Maxwell Street is an epic love story that explores the American Dream between the monolith of Jim Crow, the inflexible world of the original Black upper class, and the violence of 1920s Chicago.

From the publisher:

When a rich Black debutante enlists the help of a low-level speakeasy manager to identify the head of an underground crime syndicate, the two are thrust into the dangerous world of Prohibition-era Chicago. The year is 1921, and America is burning. A fire of vice and virtue rages on every shore, and Chicago is its beating heart. Read more here.

Avery Cunningham is a resident of Memphis, TN, and a 2016 graduate of DePaul University's Master of Arts Writing & Publishing program. She has more than a decade of of editorial experience with various literary magazines, small presses, and best-selling authors. Avery grew up surrounded by exceptional African Americans who strived to uplift their communities while also maintaining a tenuous hold on prosperity in a starkly segregated environment. The sensation of being at once within and without is something she has grappled with since childhood and explores thoroughly in her work of historical fiction. When not writing, Avery is adventuring with her Bernese Mountain Dog, Grizzly, and wading waist-deep in research for her next novel. She aspires to tell the stories of complex characters fighting for their right to exist at the fringes of history. The Mayor of Maxwell Street is her debut novel.

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